A Leg to Stand On
by SkidInSideways
Summary: When you lose a part of yourself, shouldn't it hurt?
1. Stress Positions

Stress, that ancient and perfectly rational response to real and immediate danger that morphed into a chronic condition and Eve

Stress, that ancient and very rational response to real and immediate danger that morphed into a chronic condition and Everyman's affliction in the mid-20th century, is widely believed to be caused by excessive demands on the human body and/or mind. It is rarely attributed to a lack of engrossing activity. Yet to a certain kind of person, boredom can be every bit as stressful as having too much to do. For some, over-stimulation might even be relaxing. A victim of boredom-related stress might not recognize it as the source of his problem.

Certainly, stress was not on the mind of Gregory House, MD, PhD, as he loaded an oversized red-and-gray tennis ball onto a makeshift slingshot—a strip of TheraBand that a gullible physical therapist had given him in the innocent belief that it would be used to reinvigorate the atrophied muscles of his right thigh—and took aim. What he was thinking, as he zeroed in on the crudely sketched outline of a female form as seen from behind, drawn in red and black on a portable whiteboard, was that if his boss walked through the door at that moment, he would turn his weapon on her instead. He had long ago determined that she was the source of most if not all of his problems, and recent events had added fresh evidence to the case he had spent almost a decade compiling against her.

Sadly, he had already released the ball when Dr. Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine and Adminstrator of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, did enter his office. She arrived just in time to see the it hit the caricature's outsized buttocks, bounce to the floor, and roll back towards House. It veered off-course at the last moment, but House scooped it up with the handle of a garishly decorated cane, popped it into the air, and caught it just before it bounced off Cuddy's head.

"Pretty slick," he bragged. "Of course, with a target like that you'd have to be a blind one-armed granny with the DTs not to hit it."

Years of dealing with House in just this mood had taught Cuddy that it was useless to ignore the bad behavior in the hope that it would go away. But she gave it another try just in case.

"You missed Employee Appreciation Day," she said pleasantly.

"I can't honestly say I missed it at all," House assured her. "And anyway, I was busy then, cleaning up after another one of your 'Let's play doctor' sessions."

He could almost see a thought bubble with the words "Don't take the bait" form above Cuddy's head. But he had hit a tender spot. Cuddy hesitated for less than an eyeblink before swallowing the worm, hook and all.

"He needed a cardiologist's care, not an endocrinologist, and not, I repeat, NOT interference by a nephrologist-slash-infectious disease specialist," Cuddy said, with a little too much heat. "You were not invited to the party."

"Good thing I gate-crashed, or the guy would be the main attraction at Amigone's Funeral Home right now, brand-new pacemaker and all."

"Like you cared," Cuddy snorted. "You just wanted a fresh body to try your new toy on."

"A 150,000 wide-screen high-definition surgical imaging monitor is not a toy," House chided.

"Spare me. You were playing around, throwing out one weird diagnosis after another, scaring his family half to death, and you stumbled across an actual disease. Good for you—but you don't get points for lucky breaks. Or exemptions from mandatory workplace enhancement activities."

"How about this: You relax your sphincter about when and how I use the equipment around here, and I'll take a swing at the feel-good stuff."

"You'll do the feel-good stuff anyway, or it's an extra two hours in the clinic for every day you're late. Starting today. And no assigning your team to do them for you." Cuddy looked around the suite, suddenly noticing that they were alone. "Where is your team?"

"At Krish's place, watching videos."

Cuddy did not take the news well. "What kind of videos? What are they supposed to be doing?"

"Looking for irregularities," House said airily. "Abnormalities, incipient conditions. Waldo," he added. In fact, he had swept up the piles of DVDs and VHS tapes that doctors from around the world had sent him in hopes of interesting him in their cases, piled them in a box, and handed it to Krishna Ramakrishnan, his new favorite fellow, with a solemn expression.

"Watch these," he intoned, "and tell me what you think. I want a full report from each of you."

Krish was too polite to point out that House had just emptied his In Box in full view of all three of them and the exercise was therefore suspect. "Is there anything in particular we should watch for?" he asked.

"You tell me," House said cryptically, and shooed them away.

Cuddy did not stifle an exasperated sigh. "Are you supposed to be in the clinic right now?"

"I put in my time this morning," House said quickly and, for once, truthfully.

"Then go home." The astonishment on House's face made her laugh. "I mean it. Take the afternoon off. Go home. There's nothing for you here right now, and if you're going to work off your boredom with childish tricks, I'd rather you did it at your apartment. Or Carolyn's place. Or wherever you live these days."

"Home is where I hang my cane," he said lazily, while moving smartly to pack his knapsack and leave before she could change her mind. Where was the DVD with the bootleg MP4 of Young Frankenstein he'd downloaded that morning? It had been right next to his monitor, and now it was gone. House realized he had scooped it into the box with the endoscopies, laparoscopies, CT scans, and fMRIs he'd given his fellows, and smiled. Dutiful, painfully earnest, and much too new to the Gregory House Experience to protest, they would no doubt watch every minute of Mel Brook's masterpiece with close attention, trying to discern the teaching purpose behind such phrases as "He would have to have an enormous schvanschtocker." Tomorrow's staff meeting was going to be great.

In homage to the film, House hobbled to the door in the manner of Igor (EYE-gor), his knapsack an ungainly bulge under his raincoat. Cuddy was instantly on alert.

"Is your leg bothering you?" she asked, worry sharpening her voice.

House rolled his eyes a la Marty Feldman and shifted the knapsack to his other shoulder. "What hump?" he asked, and hinched away, once again leaving his boss with one foot in sympathetic concern and the other in perplexed exasperation.

House got as far as the door to the next office when he slowed and halted. The office belonged to the eminent oncologist James Wilson, a friend who had seen him through some of the bleakest periods of his life. Now Wilson was facing a downturn in his own fortunes: early-stage Parkinson's Disease. House liked to keep an eye on Wilson, to judge for himself whether the current remission was holding or likely to turn to relapse, but according to the complicated and constantly shifting rules that governed their friendship, it was unthinkable to visit Wilson out of overt concern for his wellbeing.

So he poked his head in the door without knocking and, ignoring the distressed couple on the couch, announced, "The principal sent me home. Wanna play hookey?"

Wilson didn't look around. "Mom's gonna kill you this time for sure."

"So you're not gonna skip gym and smoke cigarettes behind the auditorium with me," House guessed. "You always were a puss—"

"—If you have any other questions, please don't ever hesitate to call me," Wilson told the couple, who were looking at House as if he were something they had almost stepped in. They thanked Wilson and filed out, carefully avoiding contact with the maniac in the doorway.

House watched them go. "Prostate?" he ventured.

"What makes you think that?"

"He's walking like you might run up behind him with a glove on one hand."

Wilson sighed. "Cuddy sent you home?"

"She feels guilty for not sharing her toys."

"She's worried that you're plotting revenge. So you have the afternoon off. Any plans, or are you just going home? Where is home, by the way?"

"Why is everyone so interested in my living arrangements all of a sudden?" House wondered. "I lived under a bridge for seven months once, and no one said a word."

"Which bridge?" asked Wilson.

"See what I mean?"

"I'm just trying, subtley and without giving offense, to find out if Carolyn has come to her senses yet."

"Now, why would I take offense at that?"

"It's so easy to offend someone as sensitive as you," Wilson explained. "So have you officially moved in? Did you give up your apartment?"

"Not in the sense of no longer paying rent on it, no."

"But you spend every night at Carolyn's," Wilson pointed out. "I deduced this from the sprinkling of dog hairs on your black t-shirt and the quality of the coffee in your travel mug, and also because you are almost in a good mood almost every morning. So why keep paying rent on a place you don't use?"

"A crib in town can come in handy," House said cryptically. "What if I save JLo's life, and she can only think of one way to thank me? Plus Carolyn won't let me hold my poker game at the farmhouse."

"I can't imagine why not."

"She has this rule about knowing people before you let them into your house for four hours of gambling and alcohol." House shrugged. "The cigar smell is an issue, too."

"What a bitch."

"She's got her good points," House admitted. "Last night, she made lasagna."

Wilson's phone rang. He picked up with one hand and held the other out at eye level.

"Yeah, I'll take the call," he said into the receiver. To House, he mouthed, "Steady as a rock."

"Yeah, but this is the hand I shoot with," House said loudly, causing his own hand to shake and jump. Wilson flapped his free hand vigorously at House.

"Go home, go...just go away," he hissed, then sat up straight. "Mrs. Wentworth! No, I'm sorry, I was talking to someone else—"

His work done, House moseyed out the door and headed for the exits, cutting through the clinic so the nurse on duty—a treacherous female named Brenda, one of Cuddy's spies—got a good look at him leaving three hours early.

In the parking lot he stopped for a moment to admire the motorcycle parked in the handicapped spot closest to the entrance. He never thought he'd own a bike like the Repsol, and he wouldn't, if its previous owner hadn't scraped all the paint off its right side and most of the skin off his right leg. The left side gleamed like new. The right side still looked like hell. Wilson found this distressing: "People will think that's how you hurt your leg!" But House preferred the misconception to the truth, which is that he was basically fucked by the fickle flying finger of fate—a blood clot had shut off circulation to the sartorius muscle in his thigh, and by the time he and the medical community managed to figure that out, most of the muscle had died. It was a stupid, senseless calamity all around, and it had taken years before House could think of it without being overcome by a rush of bitterness and anger that was all the fiercer for having no clear target.

Right now he was thinking about the bike. There was a piece of paper fluttering on the handlebars. Hedidn't really need to look at it—these notes all said the same thing—but sometimes the language was colorful enough to reward a close reading.

"I hope you are in the hospitel for somthing realy painfull, you jerk. To take a paking spot from a handicaped peerson when yoo obveously well enuff to rid a bike. YOU SUCK."

It was unsigned.

House slid his cane into the special holder he'd crafted for it and started the engine. He grinned. He couldn't help it. He rode the bike almost every day, but its throaty roar never failed to delight him. House revved the engine a couple of times in hopes that Cuddy could hear—probably not, her office faced into a courtyard on the other side of the building, but maybe someone would complain to her, and that was just as good—and took off out of the parking lot as if he were late for the motorized barstool races in Sturges.


	2. The Accidental Samaritan

Carolyn was sitting on the porch licking at an ice cream cone when he got home

The Accidental Samaritan

Carolyn was sitting on the porch eating a popsicle when he got home. She was taking her time with the business, using her tongue to smooth the sides and sliding her lips over the top. House stood for a moment watching her, then said, "That looks pretty good."

She regarded him with round, innocent eyes. "Would you like one?"

"Yeah. And I'd like a popsicle afterwards."

Carolyn held his gaze as she opened her mouth wide and snapped the top off the popsicle with her teeth. House winced. She rose and walked with dignity to the kitchen.

House came up from behind and put his arms around her. "I drive you crazy," he lamented, nuzzling her neck.

"I seem to enjoy it," she said ruefully, and turned to offer him her purple-stained lips. House took a bite of popsicle and held it in his mouth while he kissed her. Then he pushed bits of melting purple ice into her mouth with his tongue. Carolyn giggled as her 19-year-old daughter entered the kitchen.

"Impressionable young person on premises!" Angie reminded them loudly, opening the refrigerator door and half disappearing inside.

"When are you going back to college?" House asked, only half-pretending to be irritable.

"When are you going to get your own apartment?" Angie replied, only half kidding. "Oh, wait—you already have one!"

Carolyn spoke quickly. "Be nice to the boarders, baby, or our rooming house will go right down the tubes and I'll have to make your clothes out of flour sacks."

"Speaking of rooms," said House, "ours appears to be full of someone else's laundry."

"Angie needs to spread her things out so she can decide what to take back to school with her," Carolyn explained brightly.

House tried, and failed, to greet this news with mixed emotions. Carolyn had been his college girlfriend—his first girlfriend, if you must know—but they had parted ways, he thought forever, before they graduated. She had re-entered his life the previous spring, and Angie had been the vehicle: Carolyn had brought her to the clinic with what proved to be the early signs of leukemia. House had immediately put Angie in Wilson's care, then did his best to interfere at every stage of treatment. He saw a lot of Carolyn in the weeks that followed, and a renewed attraction developed between them. There had been some bumps in the road to Happily Ever After, but they sorted it out, and as summer drew to a close House had all but moved into Carolyn's farmhouse.

But that meant sharing Carolyn with Angie, who was every bit as possessive and jealous an only child as House himself, and the result was a friendly, joshing relationship spiked with an undercurrent of mutual hostility. House tried hard not to complain to Carolyn about Angie, but the effort was beginning to wear on him. It seemed only a matter of time before he lost control and delivered his undiluted opinion of the girl and her obnoxious teenage personality. This could end in tears, with Carolyn informing House that he had a pretty obnoxious teenage personality himself, just before she threw him out for good. The news that Angie was moving out came not a moment too soon for him, a fact that was not lost on the child.

"That's right," she said sadly. "I don't blame you for being happy, Greg. It's perfectly natural for the male of the species to chase away the offspring when he moves in on a newfemale." She flounced to the door, tossing an exit line over her shoulder: "But I wish you wouldn't mark your territory by pissing on the bushes; it makes them wilt."

Carolyn drew a deep, yoga-influenced breath. "I sometimes wonder which of you is a bigger pain in the ass," she said mildly. "I'm going for a ride." She stopped at the door and half-turned to him. "You aren't really pissing on the bushes. Right?"

"Right," said House, with a noticeable lack of sincerity. There were two bathrooms at Carolyn's house, but what man stood a chance against two women when it came to using them?

-0-

When they weren't quarreling, House and Angie had a very friendly relationship based on a shared interest in low-budget horror movies, junk food, and practical jokes. They had spent the month of August happily punking each other.

It started, as these things do, with an altercation over a game of Monopoly.

"Marvin Gardens with a hotel. Twelve hundred big ones," announced House.

"Dude!" complained Angie. "That'll wipe me out—wait a minute. When did you buy Marvin Gardens?"

"It was a private treaty sale," House said smugly.

"MOM!" Angie yelled. "Greg's cheating!"

"I told you he cheated, Angie," Carolyn said neutrally. "Either don't play with him, or figure out how to cheat better."

Angie regarded House through narrowed eyes. "The Short Line Railroad needs to build an extension through your neighborhood," she announced. "I'm claiming Marvin Gardens through the right of eminent domain. And the hotel's gotta go."

"You have a great future ahead of you in evicting widows," House grumbled. The game went on, but he was already plotting revenge.

Angie frequently set aside food in the frig, clearly marked as hers. House frequently ate it anyway. The night of the Monopoly game Carolyn had baked a quiche for dinner and Angie, who was studying nutrition, accused her of trying to kill them, causing Carolyn to refer to the dish as The Quiche of Death. In spite of her reservations, Angie bravely ate two slices and set aside the last piece for her lunch the next day, affixing a label, printed in red magic marker: "DO NOT EAT. FOR ANGIE. VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO SERIOUS INJURY OR PERMANENT DEATH!!" The warning was illustrated with a drawing of a skull and crossed canes instead of crossbones.

House ate the pie for breakfast the next morning, and returned the empty plate to the frig with a note of his own: "I risked my life to save you from The Quiche of Death. You're welcome."

Angie never said a word about the stolen quiche. But the following morning, when House was dressing, he felt a cool draft on his backside. Checking, he found that the rear seam to his boxers had been neatly opened. He pulled out another pair. The rear seam was open. Further investigation revealed that the rear seams on all his boxers had been carefully undone. It must have taken Angie all day to open that many seams without harming the fabric.

House retaliated by hacking into Angie's web site and posting embarrassing baby pictures there, with captions implying the baby was Angie. The next day, he almost broke an arm putting on a shirt: the sleeves had been sewn shut.

Carolyn stepped in when she caught House preparing to spike Angie's organic yogurt with hot pepper oil. Summoning her daughter to the kitchen, she lectured them sternly on the impropriety of their behavior and compelled them to exchange apologies. That evening she went to bed reassured by the sight of House and Angie sharing a huge bag of popcorn while watching South Park.

The next morning, every piece of footwear Carolyn owned was filled with popcorn, including her tall riding boots.

House and Angie being late sleepers, they couldn't say for sure that it was Carolyn who emptied all the breakfast cereals into ziplock bags and hid them, refilling the cereal boxes with very stale, foot-flavored popcorn. But it was enough to bring about a ceasefire that lasted into September.

-0-

Angie was very much her mother's daughter in an important respect: she didn't hold grudges. Now, an hour after loudly wishing House out of her home, she joined him on the porch. As a gesture of reconciliation, she helped herself to his gourmet pretzels, a special treat meant only for himself. He saw that she had already forgiven him enough to open one of his beers.

It turned out that she had an agenda for this meeting. The sole action item: her boyfriend Nate, to whom she wished to reassign the role of Good Friend.

House immediately felt a pang of sympathy for the boy. Nate had cared for Angie slavishly throughout her illness, even shaving his own hair off when chemotherapy robbed her of hers. He had stood by Angie when she was bald and boiled-looking, and now she was healthy and beautiful again, with her dark hair in short curls all over her head, and she was kicking him to the curb. House hated feeling sorry for people. It made his head ache. Angie was being a heartless, ungrateful little bitch, and he opened his mouth to tell her so. And with the expert timing characteristic of the female sex, she shut him down before he completed his wind-up.

"You know in Annie Hall, where Alvie tells Annie that a relationship is like a shark—it has to keep moving forward, or it dies?" she mused. "My relationship with Nate is a dead shark. You know what?"

House couldn't imagine.

"I think Nate liked it better when I was sick," Angie asserted. "He liked it when I was weak and had to stay home and depend on him all the time. Now I'm feeling good, and I want to go out and see people and have fun, and he wants to stay home. If he goes out with me, he gets jealous and clingy. And if I go out without him—" her voice faltered; then she tilted her chin defiantly and finished her thought—"I have more fun!"

House was silent. Stacy used to go out without him toward the end. She told him once that she always felt like crying when it was time to go home. To him.

Angie threw herself back in her chair, limp with relief at having said the worst. "I know I bust your balls a lot," she told House, "but some things are easier to talk about with you than Mom. She would freak if I told her I was breaking up with Nate. She'd feel all sorry for him."

House, that cool-headed pragmatist in affairs of the heart, accepted the compliment silently.

"So now, how do I do this?" Angie wondered aloud. "Do you think—I mean, I would be really careful not to hurt his feelings, but an email—"

"Do not email him," House said emphatically. "Do not IM, text message, or voice mail him the news. Don't write a Dear Nate letter and let the postal service do your dirty work. Don't call him so you don't have to see his face when his heart breaks."

He glanced at Angie; she had slumped in her chair and was sullenly twisting her bits of downy hair into minute deadlocks, but she was listening. House softened his tone.

"Even a pain in the ass deserves a face-to-face dismissal, Angie," he said. "Nate's a good kid; he can't help it that he's boring and not as smart as you. Let him down easy. And don't ask him to be your friend; at least, not right away."

Angie took a swig of beer and stared moodily down the road. "I hate this shit," she muttered. "Maybe I'll just pick on him until he dumps me."

House had fallen silent again, pondering Angie's case against Nate. People chewed your ass because you didn't form attachments, then they chewed your ass for getting too attached. Or maybe some people were more intolerant of clinginess than others. Was this another trait Angie might have in common with her mother? Should he start spending the odd night at his own place?

His thoughts were interrupted by the throaty roar of a motorcycle going full-throttle down the road. House lifted his eyes just in time to see a crouched figure streak by on a red blur. The rider wore no helmet; the ER staff would've referred to him as an organ donor. Even as the thought crossed his mind, House heard the squeal of brakes and the sharp report of a vehicle crashing onto asphalt. Where did Hollywood get the idea that automotive accidents always involved three minutes of squealing tires and shattering glass? In House's experience, it was usually over in one bang, often so muffled that it took a moment to register that something serious had just happened.

Having crashed, the bike's motor cut out; the crickets, shocked by the noise, took a moment to collect themselves, then resumed their song as if the world had not just come to an end for some luckless idiot.

Angie leaped to the porch rail, craning to see the wreckage. House remained in his chair, gathering strength for what lay ahead. A crash like that couldn't possibly have a good outcome.

Angie whirled to face him. "Greg, I think he's badly hurt!" she gasped. "Shouldn't you do something?"

He nodded, rising stiffly. His leg, lulled almost pain-free by the tranquility of the late-summer afternoon, responded with a nasty muscle spasm that quickly developed into an insistent, all-too-familiar ache. House hobbled toward the porch stairs.

"Go into the back seat of my car," he called over his shoulder. "Get my bag and meet me by the body. I'll call 911." Angie sped down the driveway to his car. House paused to make sure she was preoccupied and quickly popped a pill. Then another one. Then he flipped open his cell phone—which was, for once, in his pocket and, more miraculously still, fully charged—and called for an ambulance. Angie waited for him at the end of the driveway, almost levitating on nerves and adrenalin.

The cycle had crashed about 50 yards down and across the road from the house, more or less in front of the farm where Carolyn stabled her horses. Angie sprinted ahead and reached the rider just as he raised himself from the pavement and attempted to stand.

"Lie down! You've got to lie down!" Angie cried hoarsely, as House limped onto the scene. The rider was up on his left knee, struggling to get his other leg under him. But the right leg was bent at a weird angle near his hip, and his foot was pointing the wrong way. As he shifted his weight, blood spurted from his femoral artery and splashed on the road, creating a livid new puddle with every beat of his heart.

House staggered forward and dropped to his knees, throwing his upper body at the rider's side. "Lie down, you idiot," he barked. "Lie down, and maybe we can save the leg."

This was exactly the kind of snap diagnosis that EMTs were forbidden to make in the field, but House was not an EMT and saw no reason to spare the patient's feelings or put him in a good mood. The latter was very much on his mind as the rider finally subsided and let him begin examining the mangled leg. It was broken in at least three places, with two compound fractures. Shock only partly explained why the guy had tried to stand on it—the pain should have prostrated him. Either he was riding an adrenalin high like no other or he was partially anesthesized. House sniffed his breath: alcohol, but he didn't reek like a drunk driver would. There was no aroma of pot on his breath or his clothes. House rolled up one of the kid's sleeves, exposing a row of blackened puncture wounds. Probably opium, or the kid would be raising hell in spite of his shattered leg. Well, no morphine for this dimwit. He'd have to suck up the pain until he detoxed. At least it would take his mind off losing his leg for a while.

House noted all this with the clinical detachment of a 25-year medical professional, but it was a new experience for poor Angie, who now approached with his medical bag in hand. She got a good look at the rider's leg, the blood and the bits of bone poking through his torn jeans; went white as skim milk; and reeled toward the ditch, retching.

"Get back here, Angie—this isn't hurting you any," House snapped. The girl swallowed hard and returned to his side. House glanced at her ashen face and added, "I know you'd rather be anywhere else, but this guy needs your help, and so do I. Sometimes you have to suck it up and do the hard thing."

Her face ghastly and her hands shaking, Angie listened to his instructions and followed them scrupulously.

Job One was to stop the arterial bleeding. House had Angie cut yards and yards of gauze, finally using every inch of the stuff in his bag, and still the blood seeped through and ran in rivulets on the road. He was going to have to put direct pressure on the artery, but what remained of the kid's thigh was a mush of crushed flesh and disarranged plumbing, and when he placed a hand on the kid's groin in hopes of pining the wayward artery to the ilium, he couldn't feel it. Without hesitating, House plunged his other hand into the gore and rummaged. There—that got it. He looked to Angie to wipe the sweat from his eyes, but she was depositing the last of the beer and pretzels in a clump of weeds. She recovered quickly, though, and staggered back to his side.

Their patient remained eerily serene, alternately gazing up at the cloudless sky and asking over and over again what day it was. Angie patiently answered him each time until she realized that he was not going to retain the information no matter how articulately she supplied it, and when he asked for the ninth or tenth time, she ignored the question and posed one for him: "What is your name?"

"Sam Hollister," he said, and looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected to remember this.

"Where do you live, Sam?" asked House.

Sam had resumed his placid skyward gaze and did not answer immediately. Then, as if a channel had changed, he suddenly groaned. "My bike—is it okay?"

"It's a yard sale," House told him. "Totaled. It doesn't matter, because you're not going to be riding again for a long time. Maybe never."

A small crowd, comprising the owner of the stable and her employees, had gathered by this time and overheard him. There was a collective gasp and an intensified series of looks at the doctor and patient: admonishment for the former, sympathy for the latter. House ignored them. The only reaction he was interested in was Hollister's.

But Hollister just smiled. "You ride?" he asked.

House eyed him suspiciously. "Yeah."

"Then it's probably cool. If you can ride with only one good leg, so can I."

Angie gave House a baffled look. "He can't remember that it's Tuesday, but he noticed your bad leg?"

"He's had a concussion," House said dismissively. "The memory gets selective when the bell gets rung." He was more interested in Hollister's attitude; heroin or no heroin, the prospect of losing a leg should provoke a more vigorous reaction.

The artery was under control and the leg as stabilized as House could make it when they finally heard the wail of the ambulance siren. House drew a deep breath.

"We're safe now," he said mockingly. "The Earn Money Sleeping guys are here!"

There was a soft thunder of hooves on turf as Carolyn galloped up on her horse Jack, her face as white as Hollister's. House wondered briefly at her frantic look. He had not yet learned that when a mother sees an ambulance parked near her home, she automatically assumes the worst.

Carolyn took in the situation at a glance and dismounted. "Do you need anything?" she asked House, who shook his head. To Angie: "You okay, Baby?" The girl gave her a weak smile.

A twentysomething kid who looked too young to qualify for a Scouting first-aid badge pushed to the center of the crowd and sized up the patient.

"Shit!" he said to his fellow EMTs, who were right on his heels. "It's Deadman."

"You know him?" House asked, as the team get to work on Hollister.

"Someone did a real nice job on this artery," the twentysomething said approvingly. "You a doctor?"

"If that's important, yes," said House impatiently. "You know this guy?"

"Sorta. He's one of our frequent fliers," the twentysomething confided. "Nice guy, real polite, but he loves to party and he don't know when to say when. We picked him up for OD, alcohol poisoning, accidents. Once he fell into a dry creek and broke both legs."

"He'll only have one leg to worry about after today," House observed. The twentysomething gave him a warning look.

"We don't know how this'll turn out yet," he said loudly. "Sooner we get him to the ER, the better. You wanna ride along, Doc?"

Riding along meant getting involved; getting involved was something House ordinarily avoided. He felt the usual urge to step back, detach, let someone else deal—but he also felt something stronger: curiousity.

He could not fathom Hollister's serenity. In a similar situation, House would have been howling with pain and outrage. If he took himself out of the picture now, he might lose access to the patient and never find out why Hollister seemed so comfortably resigned to his changed circumstances.

As it often had in the past, curiousity trumped reticence. When the ambulance doors closed, House was behind them, bracing with his good leg against the bumps and jolts on the road to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.


	3. Serenity

By law, a physician is not required to help an accident victim just because he or she happens to stumble on the scene

By law, a physician is not required to help an accident victim just because he or she happens to stumble on the scene. In practice, most will provide at least basic medical assistance until the ambulance arrives. A doctor who would decline to use his or her skills to alleviate the suffering and reduce the chances of death for a fellow human being would not be held in much esteem by his or her peers.

House never gave a wet slap about the opinion of his peers and hated getting involved in a sudden illness or accident, and not just because he disliked patients as a rule. Once the excitement is over there are EMTs, ER staff, and attending physicians, all wanting to hear the same information, over and over. There is paperwork, and paperwork always made House want to drench his office in gasoline, set a match, and flee. And although the terms of the so-called Good Samaritan Laws protect a doctor from being sued for assisting in an accident, there are plenty of other targets for victims and their families, who love to drag the doctor who was at the scene into sordid, protracted civil cases.

When House found himself the only medical professional in the vicinity of a sick or injured person, his policy was to refrain from identifying himself as such and call for an ambulance. Then he would stick around on the periphery to make sure the patient's condition didn't take a turn for the worse, or that some heroic bystander didn't inadvertently kill the poor fool with misapplied or inappropriate first aid measures.

But Deadman chose to dump his bike almost in front of House's home, in the middle of nowhere, and he would have bled to death by the side of the road before the ambulance could get to him. So House did what he could to preserve life. Technically—because a doctor can legally hand off the patient to the ambulance crew as soon as they arrive—he was then free to head back to the farmhouse for a well-deserved beer.

Instead, he accompanied Deadman to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. There was something going on with the guy that could not be explained by his injuries or the drugs and alcohol coursing through his veins. House deeply believed that no one says "Bummer, man" when told they are going to lose a leg. Had Deadman sustained a head injury that the ER staff might be miss as they hurried him into surgery? After all, he hadn't been wearing a helmet. (But even a brand-new, high-tech helmet can only do so much in a crash. As Carolyn had remarked about House's new 200 full-face Bell Apex, a good helmet would preserve a rider's head beautifully as it went rolling down the highway.)

Deadman drifted in and out of consciousness for most of the ride, rousing himself at one point to thank House for keeping him from exsanguinating in a ditch.

"Gary..." he nodded toward the driver, the twentysomething who'd told House about Deadman's record of hospitalizations, "Gary says I woulda died if you hadn'ta been there. He says I should be honored, because you're some kind of famous doctor."

House grunted; a red-hot wire was being tightened between his knee and hip. He fumbled for his pills and took two.

"So. Whaddya think." Deadman drew a breath. "Are they gonna be able to save my leg?"

"Not a chance," House said emphatically. "It's broken in at least two places, some of it's crushed, and the whole thing is being held on by a couple strips of duct tape. They'll take it off before midnight." He watched Deadman's face closely as he delivered the news. The fact that Deadman had asked the question suggested that he wasn't as comfortable with the idea as his demeanor implied. Maybe he'd just been in such deep shock earlier that he hadn't really absorbed the gravity of his condition.

But Deadman closed his eyes and nodded resignation. "Yeah, I kinda thought so. Just wanted to make sure." Silence, then: "Guess I can't make a livin' fixin' cars no more." Pause. "That sucks."

House almost broke character with some consoling words; he was a fair shade tree mechanic himself, and having only one good leg didn't keep him from doing most repair and maintenance jobs. But he wanted Deadman to meditate on the prospect of losing his livelihood for awhile.

Instead, Deadman opened his eyes and gave House a crooked grin. "Guess I'll have to go back to school now. At least my mom'll be happy."

So he'd not only found a way to make peace with losing 20 percent of his body, he'd already plotted an alternative future. House was beginning to find Deadman's relentlessly positive attitude unnerving. He noticed beads of sweat on the younger man's forehead and asked him if he was in any pain.

"It's starting to hurt some," Deadman admitted, in a squeezed voice that suggested it hurt a lot.

"Too bad," House said heartlessly. "Between the twelve-pack and the smack, they won't dare give you anything for pain." Again he watched Deadman's face for a sign of anger, outrage, even petulance. But again, Deadman just nodded.

"I kinda figured that," he said, and slipped back into unconsciousness.

-0-

People who complain about interminable waits in an ER don't know the right way to present themselves. If you arrive in an ambulance with one leg hanging by a thread, you'll be seen right away.

House relinquished Deadman to the attending physician as soon as they arrived, and waited as the patient was whisked away to the imaging department. It was past suppertime, so he dined on vending machine fare: a Snickers, a bag of pretzels, and a Coke. This menu, and variations thereof, had once been a regular part of his diet, and he was surprised to find that after just a few months of good cooking, it was no longer as palatable as he remembered.

He was slumped in a chair, his leg propped on a second chair, half-watching Deal or No Deal and half listening to a young couple tensely but quietly apportion blame for letting their toddler catch what looked like a standard head cold, when the attending returned and led him to an empty examining room, where he ran through a series of scans of Deadman's head and leg.

"Can the leg be saved?" asked House.

"No way," said the attending. "There's nothing left to save. What was he doing, using it as a brake?"

"Have you told him?"

"Yeah."

"How'd he take it?"

The attending looked startled: nothing he'd heard about the infamous Dr. House had prepared him for concern over a patient's emotional state. "He took it okay. I think he's still kinda shocky. He said he thought he'd probably lose it, so just get it over with."

"When's the party?"

"Tomorrow morning, earliest. We're still waiting for the tox screen to see if we even dare to give him something for the pain, and no anesthesiologist is gonna touch him until some of that crap clears his system."

"How about his head?"

The attending jerked his head toward a series of CT scans. "No swellings, no bruising, no nothing. He wasn't wearing a helmet?"

House shook his head.

"He is one lucky dude. Judging by that leg, he shoulda completely scrambled his eggs."

-0-

It was now part of farmhouse canon that House despised Chuck the Truck, Carolyn's 1500-series pick-up, as inefficient and ungainly. The truth was that he liked it a lot. Its height made it easy for a tall man with a bad leg to climb into, and there was more headspace than he'd ever had in any of his clapped-out sedans. As a conveyance, it was amazingly quiet and smooth and a pleasure to drive. There was a good stereo system with a wired-in iPod connection and plush, heated seats.

Carolyn had preheated the passenger seat when she pulled up to the curb. House got in, not even trying to hide his exhaustion and pain, and let his lower body sink gratefully into the warmth. Five miles down the road, the muscles began to relax and unknot.

"How's the patient?" Carolyn asked.

House made a dismissive gesture. "Guy's a loser; a stoner without enough grey matter for a brain injury. Tell him he's going in for an amputation right after breakfast, and he's, like, 'Whoa. Harsh. C'n I have Pepsi instead of coffee?'"

"Well, that's good, isn't it? It's better than having a patient who gets hysterical, anyway."

House was silent; she had just put her finger on a very sore spot.

He had not taken the news well when he was told amputation was necessary, and when he discovered that his plan for salvaging his leg had been ignored in favor of removing the dead tissue, his reaction had been even worse—so bad that they'd had to sedate him to keep him from leaping out of the bed. House had always assumed that anyone in that position would have done the same. Deadman was threatening to poke a large hole in that assumption, and in doing so was delivering a hard blow to House's self-image, already a tattered, broken thing.

The thought made him irritable.

"Why do you have the heater on?" he demanded. "It's almost 70 degrees outside!"

Carolyn, startled by his vehemence, began to explain. "I thought you'd be—tired, and I know when I've worked hard it feels good to sit in a warm seat."

"Tired."

"Yes..."

"Why don't you ever want to talk about it?" House demanded. "I drag one leg around like a sandbag. I use a cane that makes me look twenty years older than you. I can't dance, I can't get on top of you in bed, I can't even carry in the groceries. I'm not tired, I'm a cripple, dammit! Why can't you just come right out and say it: 'Your gnarly leg hurts so I'm heating up your seat, it's just one of the little things I do for my boyfriend-with-a-disability.'"

Carolyn pulled to the side of the road and stopped the truck. They sat for a moment, listening to the engine ticking.

"Do you want to talk about it now?" she asked politely.

House, ashamed, turned his head toward the window.

Carolyn considered her next words. One day House was going to have to get her to teach him how to do that.

"I don't know how to talk to you about it," she said finally. "Most of the time I have nothing to say anyway. I knew you before the aneurysm—I have an idea of you that doesn't revolve around either of your legs, one way or the other. Obviously the debridement changed things. Drastically. But I don't automatically think of it when I think of you, except every now and then it crosses my mind to do something that might make it easier for you, or help with the pain. If that makes you feel—insulted, as if I don't think you can take care of yourself, just tell me, and I'll stop."

More silence.

"I'm sorry," mumbled House.

"I accept," Carolyn said mildly. "But as punishment, I am temporarily revoking your music-selection privileges." And she dialed up some banal mid-1980s pop tunes on her iPod—Aha!, for god's sake! Why would she download something like that?—which House suffered in heroic silence all the way to the farmhouse.

As they were mounting the back steps to the kitchen, Carolyn said, over her shoulder, "I'd rather be on top anyway."

She looked back at him, hooding her eyes and pouting her lips; but the effect was goofy rather than seductive, and House, in spite of himself, started to laugh.

-0-

Later, as they were sitting on the porch trying not to think about the bloodstains on the road, Carolyn suddenly said, "If someone told me they were going to cut off my leg, I would cry and cry and cry. I'm afraid there would be screaming, too."

"Would there," said House, his chin sunk in his chest.

"There would. I would be sure that I would look ugly and unsexy, and no one would ever want to see me naked again. I wouldn't want to see me naked! Of course, Heather Mills proved that you can be short a limb and still score Paul McCartney."

"Who proceeded to dump her."

"Over porn and other irreconcilible differences, not her stump. Anyway. The screaming and crying would probably go on for awhile, then I'd get tired of it and started thinking of ways to go on doing what I like to do with only one leg. I could still ride. I could still do my job and read and play guitar. As long as I could do those things, I'd be all right."

"And all this healthy processing would take how long?"

"Couple of days." House turned his head toward her, and even in the dark she could see the skepticism in his eyes. "Couple of days to stop the crying," she amended. "I don't like to cry. It gives me a stuffy nose and a foggy brain and makes my eyes sore. Fully recovering mentally might take awhile longer."

"So you'd get right to it," House said, an unpleasant note entering his voice. "You'd adopt a positive attitude: The glass is still half full! You still have one leg left! You'd do 12 weeks of physical therapy in eight and win an Olympic gold medal in a year."

Carolyn shot him a watch-it-pal look but answered evenly. "What's the big deal about physical therapy? You go in, you do your exercises, you regain some function. I did it after I broke my collarbone, and thank god I did, because I had frozen shoulder when I started—I couldn't raise my arm. So yeah, I probably would get right down to it. The Olympic medal, though—that seems unlikely, since I have two good legs now and I'm not a contender."

House had spent a great deal of time over eight years sitting on his ass feeling sorry for himself. He wondered if Carolyn knew this. One conversation with Wilson would have told her all she needed to know. But Carolyn was gazing moodily out over the pastures. Unlike just about everyone else he'd encountered in recent years, she was not triumphantly studying his expression to see if he would recognize himself in her words.

"You're a contender, all right," he assured her, with a poor imitation of Marlon Brando. "No, seriously; you're a strong lady. I could picture you winning wheelchair races after a month—by cheating, of course—and back up on a horse in less than a year."

Carolyn turned to him with a warm smile.

"But first, there'd be the tears," House added cautiously. "Right?"

"Oh, yeah." She rolled her eyes. "There would be tears!"

For some reason, House found that assurance profoundly comforting.


	4. Practical Surgery

Practical Surgery

Deadman was neither stuffy of nose nor foggy of brain when House found him in the surgical suite the next morning. On the contrary, he appeared to have slept well and seemed remarkably refreshed for someone who should be over the top with withdrawal symptoms. He'd been prepped for surgery and was waiting for his turn in the OR. There was a skinny, timorous-looking young woman with lank blond hair and several layers of Maybelline on her face sitting by Deadman's gurney, holding his hand with one of hers as she dabbed at her streaming eyes with the other. Deadman was talking to her in a low, humorous voice, interrupted now and then with a chuckle.

"So Ma says the whole church is gonna pray for me," he was saying, "and I go, 'Ma, I know you're totally copacetic with god, and that's cool, he'll probably listen to you, but what's to pray for? That it grows back?'" He roared with laughter. When he saw House, he beamed and waved as if they were old pals meeting at a sports bar.

"Doc—c'mere, siddown! Britney, here he is, here's the dude who saved me! Doc, my wife, Britney."

Britney gave House a watery little smile, then burst into tears again.

"Aw, honey, don't...Doc, you tell her, I'm gonna be okay, right? Tell her."

But House just stared. "You're married?"

"Well..." Deadman looked roguish. "Not in a church-and-wedding cake way. But we feel married, don't we, honey?"

Britney, who was blowing her nose loudly, nodded.

House felt for his wallet. "Britney, run down to the cafeteria and get me a caramel mochachino latte, half decaf, soy milk—NOT real milk, it gives me the runs, so I'll know if you cheated—and whipped LIGHT cream with cinnamon. And get one for yourself while you're at it." He put a twenty dollar bill in her hand.

Britney gave him a glassy-eyed stare, looked at the money in her hand, and turned to Deadman. The latter, after a quick, shocked glance at House, shrugged.

"Go on, baby. They ain't coming for me for another half hour anyways."

Britney shuffled out, her scrawny feet flapping inside her oversized rubber clogs.

Deadman waited until she was out of earshot, then turned to House.

"What's up, Doc? ...Hey, get it? No, really, what's up—am I in trouble?" For the first time, Deadman seemed worried.

"Not that I'm aware of. Your leg is starting to necrotize—rot, in other words—but once they take it off you should be okay. Except for the having-one-leg part." House looked closely at him, but the only thing Deadman's expression revealed now was relief.

"Aw, man, you scared me! When you sent Brit away like that, I thought I was gonna get some really bad news."

"Deadma—Sam. In less than an hour they're going to rev up a chainsaw and cut off your leg. That's not bad news?"

"No shit? They really use a chainsaw? Cool!" Deadman was psyched. "Man, I wish I could stay awake for that!"

"Sam!" House shouted. "You're gonna wake up one leg short of a set. Don't you have any...feelings...about that?"

Deadman looked puzzled. "Well, yeah, sure I do. It totally, totally sucks. But I took a look at my leg this morning, and it's really gross. The toes are turning black. The sooner it comes off, the better."

"And you don't worry about spending the rest of your life as a cripple?"

Deadman winced at the word, but his brow was relaxed. "Coulda been worse."

"Coulda been a lot better," House said mockingly. "Coulda made it home in one piece."

"Naw." Deadman was all seriousness now. "I knew that wasn't gonna happen. I'm just lucky to be alive, is all."

"So you dumped your bike. Most people live through that and keep both legs."

"I didn't just dump my bike," Deadman corrected him. "You seen what happened."

"I didn't see everything," House admitted. "You were hitting some speed, and you'd been partying. I didn't see what made you crash."

"It was my higher power, man," Deadman assured him solemnly.

"Your higher power," repeated House, leaning back a little as if Deadman had something that might be contagious.

"Yeah, man. My higher power wanted me to re-evaluate my life. But I'm a stubborn dumbass, and he finally had to whup me upside the head to get my attention."

House made an impolite noise.

"I know it sounds stupid," Deadman said earnestly, "but I've been riding for a fall for a long, long time. I've been drinkin' and druggin' since I was 12 years old, doing stupid things that shoulda got me killed—shit, sometimes it almost did get me killed—but every time I got out alive, I thought, 'I ain't gotta stop just yet.' This—" he jerked his chin in the direction of his dying toes—"is just what it took to make me wake up."

House slumped in his chair, inutterably aggravated. Another 12-step-flavored tale of ruin and redemption; he could almost hear the rest of the room murmuring "Keep coming back."

Deadman wasn't finished sharing. "I really thought I was gonna die this time," he mused. "I took the day off because some of my old buds was in town. We started drinkin' at nine and shootin' up at noon. Then Britney called to say our younger son was real sick."

Younger son? Deadman looked to be about 20. He had multiple offspring?

"I knew I was too fucked up to drive, but Ashton is asthmatic, and we almost lost him a couple times already. So I took off for home. I knew I was way too shitfaced to drive that fast, but at the same time I wasn't getting home fast enough—you know what I mean?" House nodded reluctantly. "Anyways, there was a cat in the road. I knew I was goin' too fast for it to be safe, but Britney loves cats...I swerved, and felt my rear tire go right out from under me, and I knew I was gonna die. It was just—'Fuckit, Hollister, you ain't gettin' out of it this time.' Biggest surprise of my life was opening my eyes and realizing I was still alive. After that..." His voice trailed away temporarily, then became more resolved. "Most stuff looks like minor details, y'know?"

House did not know. His own brush with death had not filled him with gratitude and joy in merely living; it had filled him with rage at the casual, random violence that had altered his life forever. The fact that he was able to keep his leg paled beside the realization that it would never again support his weight; no matter how much physical therapy he submitted to, no matter how positive his attitude, it would always crumple beneath him like a broken chair. And it would always, always hurt.

Britney returned, bearing the vile but time-consuming concoction House had ordered and an even more vile one for herself. Occasional whiffs of hazelnut, chocolate, and cinnamon escaped from under a tower of whipped cream, and from the way Britney was sucking on the straw, House determined that her beverage was iced rather than hot. When had a simple cup of coffee turned into an expensive milkshake?

There was a sudden flurry of activity as the anesthesiologist, two orderlies, and a nurse arrived to start Deadman's sedation and whisk him off to the operating room. He was half in the bag before they even wheeled him out of the holding area, but he had his wits about him enough to give House and Britney a jocular thumbs-up as the retinue disappeared around a corner.

Britney emitted a high-pitched squeal of grief and turned in House's direction, but he guessed her intention and high-tailed it out of the surgical suite. Standing behind a pillar at the elevator bank, he watched as Britney emerged into the waiting area and collapsed into the arms of an astonishingly fat woman whose hair and eyes marked her as Britney's mother. A small crowd of people, some resembling Britney, some Deadman, clustered around them. The women closed their eyes, raised one or both hands, and began to pray loudly. One of the women was holding a toddler on one hip and had another small, soiled-looking boy by the hand. A cluster of males in grease-stained Carhart jackets and enormous yellow work boots stood awkwardly off to the side.

The toddler lolled against his handler's neck, his cheeks reddened. House made a mental note to send a nurse up to look at the kid—it might be just a cold, but there was no sense in taking chances with asthma.

-0-

Deadman's surgery would take more than an hour. House killed the time by dialing the Department for Neurological Pathology at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and asking for Dr. Eric Foreman.

There was a prolonged period of listening to awful Music On Hold before Foreman picked up.

"House," he said heartily. "I was just enjoying the beautiful morning, and wondering if anything could possibly ruin my good mood."

"There's a patient I need you to look at," said House.

"A patient. Your patient?"

"Yours, mine, ours," House mocked. "When you think about it, isn't anyone who needs our help our patient?"

"House. We usually couldn't get you to claim a patient even if he had your social security number tattoed on his forehead. What's the deal with this guy?"

House recounted a brief history of Deadman.

There was a pause.

"Okay," said Foreman. "Let's recap. You want me to pathologize a patient because he's acting too well-adjusted."

"He thinks losing a leg is a heaven-sent opportunity to get right with Jesus. He was grinning and joking all the way to the OR. That doesn't strike you as abnormal?"

"He's got a stable relationship, two kids he loves, and a crowd of people who care about him enough to pray for him in the waiting room," Foreman observed. "Research shows that patients from a supportive environment take bad news better and even heal faster than patients without."

"Don't forget the power of prayer," House said saracastically.

Another moment of silence. "I know your thoughts on this, so I don't expect you to give three cheers for prayer," Foreman said finally. "But I wouldn't discount it, either." Another silence. "I was asked to consult on a case last month. A 37-year-old male, lung cancer metastisized to his brain. I did some imaging toward the end. House, the guy had no brain left. Nothing. A few days later I came in, and his regular nurse was standing by the station looking depressed, and I knew he was dead. I asked her about it, and she got all excited. The guy hadn't spoken in weeks. And at some point during the night, he suddenly opened his eyes and talked to his family. He had something to say to each one of them. This went on for about 15 minutes. Then he closed his eyes again, and in less than an hour he died. The nurse said, 'I know you scientific types don't like to hear this, Dr. Foreman. But I saw the whole thing, and there's no other word for it; it was a miracle."

"Praise the lord," said House.

Foreman sighed. "All right. But I saw the images. It wasn't the work of a brain awash in serotonin. The guy had no brain."

"How good of god," breathed House. "He hit the guy with lung cancer, stole his brain, killed him before he was 40, widowed his wife, and orphaned his kids—but first he gave him a chance to say goodbye!"

"Yeah," Foreman said. "We don't have all the answers, is all I'm saying. But send me Deadman's records, and I'll take a look."

-0-

His team arrived while House was on the phone. Turning to them, he wondered how long it would take before he stopped feeling unpleasantly surprised every time he saw them occupying the chairs that used to hold Foreman, Cameron, and Chase. Worse, their expressions showed that they believed they had every right to be there. In House's view, they had no right to look so complacent. You had to earn the privilege of looking comfortable at his conference table, and not one of these young jokers had even come close.

House looked his team over, trying to remember why he'd hired them in the first place. Well, to be fair, he had recruited Krishna—"Krish," House called him, with a pseudo-drunken slur—over the course of a memorable week in New York. At least, it would have been memorable if there hadn't been so much alcohol involved. During that time Krish had shown himself to be a master of disguise, hiding a wealth of ego and deviousness behind a pair of soulful brown eyes and a face as placid as a bowl of milk-chocolate pudding. He was smart and funny and good at his job. He also had a will of iron. If Krish thought he was right, he planted his feet, met opposition head-on, and did not move. House looked forward to breaking that will the way healthier people look forward to a nice game of tennis.

On the other hand, Dr. Lois Tomczik had been imposed on House by the only person in the world who could impose anything on him. Cuddy had stood aside observing silently as House made one single hire in preparation for the departure of three doctors. Chase began to spend more and more time in the ICU—she said nothing. Cameron had to travel back and forth to Ohio to iron out the details of her new post there—Cuddy kept her counsel.

But then Foreman decided to burn up some vacation time on a trip to New Orleans, and the very day he left, House got a referral he couldn't resist. Cameron was in Ohio and not due back for five days. And within hours of the referral, Chase got buried in ICU when the entire student population of one of the university's "theme houses"—this one devoted to cultural diversity—decided to try making their own kimchi in their own backyard, from scratch, using traditional clay pots and without the benefit of additives or preservatives.

The kids wound up with the worst case of _Listeria monocytogenes_-induced listeriosis anyone could remember. House's only comment was that anyone who would eat food that had been buried in New Jersey soil probably shouldn't have been admitted to the university in the first place. But that took nothing away from the savagery of the pathogen, which left the undergraduates sick as multicultural dogs, with a 25 percent chance of succumbing to the disease. Even House couldn't think up a convincing case for relieving Chase of his duties.

Faced with the challenge of taking on a case while minimally staffed, House responded with his usual aplomb; he put in 14-hour days but went back to the farm house no later than ten, assigning the wee hours to Krish, who was also working 14-hour days.

As the third day dawned, Cuddy appeared in House's office like the Ghost of HR Issues to Come and challenged him to tell her where his team was. As it turned out, House knew Krish's whereabouts perfectly well. Briskly, he lead the way to the men's room and looked under the stall doors until he spotted a pair of feet clad in Birkenstocks and black socks. Peering over the door, he saw Krish sitting on the toilet, fully clothed and sound asleep, his head pressed against the metal wall. House went into the adjoining stall and rapped briskly on the shared wall with his cane, then slipped back out again to greet a frazzled Krish as he staggered out of the stall.

Over House's protests—Cameron would be back before midnight that night!—Cuddy grabbed a sheaf of resumes and ordered House to hire at least one candidate in the next 24 hours, or his parking spot would be converted to a loading zone for the local transportation service for the elderly and handicapped. House knew she had been looking for a suitable alternative ever since the present loading zone had been pronounced inadequate under the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act. He knew his spot was perfect for that use. And he knew that once she had so designated it, he would not be able to get his spot back without going to court, where his chances of winning were slim to none. So he caved. And except for the day her car mysteriously turned up parked in a handicapped space and was towed and held hostage for a princely sum, Cuddy did not suffer for it.

House chose his new employee in typical non-standard fashion: with Krish as his hollow-eyed audience, he drew a circle in bright pink chalk on the carpet, then tossed the resumes in the air and only followed up on the ones that landed inside the circle. And one of the candidates was Lois Tomczik.

Tomczik's hair was cropped to a strictly utilitarian length, her figure was unremarkable, and she had the bright-eyed mien of the born underachiever. She also had the ballsy presence of a butch lesbian who is perfectly comfortable with her sexuality but is not above enjoying the discomfort it caused in others.

"You're a dyke," House commented, when she arrived for her interview.

"Good eye," Tomczik said cheerfully. "What gave me away: the crewcut, the Brooks Brothers shirt, or the labial tattoo?"

House invited her to talk about herself. "I'm a bull dyke," Tomczik announced. "My preference is for femmes, but if she's a real babe, I can go for a little butch-on-butch action, too."

"Do you have any deep, dark secrets I should know about?" asked House, trying to keep a straight face.

"I was a cheerleader in high school," Tomczik whispered hoarsely. "But now that I've told you that, I'm gonna have to kill you."

She had started out as an OB-GYN, but was looking for a career change. "I'm an old-fashioned girl," Tomczik explained. "If I'm gonna spend all night with an arm up a strange vagina, I want dinner and a movie first." Further investigation revealed Dr. Tomczik to be an excellent doctor whose careful monitoring, emphasis on preventative care, and remarkable ability to make patients go along with her recommendations meant she rarely had to deal with a difficult case. As a result, she was painfully bored with the miracle of life and looking for a challenge equal to the restless intelligence House detected behind the clowning. Tomczik specialized in endocrinology, had extensive background in genetics, and was known as a patient scientist who looked at all factors before arriving at a diagnosis. And she made House laugh, although he was careful to never let her know that. She was hired within 18 hours of Cuddy's ultimatum.

The other new team member was harder to explain. Dr. June Messenger's resume had fallen inside the circle, but it landed in such a way that the first thing House saw when he glanced at it was her undergraduate year in Kenya—not as a pre-med studying the AIDS epidemic or the TB infection rate, but as a civil engineering major on a team that built a water treatment facility serving four villages, which reduced the rate of water-borne disease by 65 in the first year of operation.

Messenger—The Mess— was a mystery to House because he could not figure out how anyone that timid and unassuming could make it through the world of outsized egos and merciless competition that was medical school. Yet she had managed to graduate, magna cum laude, from one of the best schools in the country. At 32, her CV was studded with awards, honors, and publications. She rarely spoke above a whisper. But when she did speak, she had the same tenacity House had detected in Krish. Within moments of introducing herself, she had caught House in an error and corrected him. House drew himself up to an imposing height and delivered a thunderous remonstrance. Messenger literally shriveled before his eyes. But she squeaked out a firm defense of her position, and House, while not ceding the point, moved on. He discovered that she was a truly conservative, evangelical Christian with correspondingly right-wing views on homosexuality and reproductive freedom. Putting her on a team with Lois ("Butch") Tomczik was an irresistible temptation that House gave in to without a struggle.

The combination had yielded conflict beyond his fondest expectations. Butch sussed out The Mess in the first five minutes of their acquaintance and made a point of sharing her latest conquest with the class at every opportunity.

"You shoulda seen the babe I took home last night," she bragged on this occasion. "Hot, hot, hot, and horny as hell—we barely got through the door before she was in my pants. She's got a brother, Krish. Wanna double-date?"

"I don't agree with homosexuality," whispered Messenger.

"No shit? Well, homosexuality probably wouldn't agree with you, either," said Butch, and she put her Doc Martined feet up on the table, nanometers from Messenger's bran muffin and decaf tea.

"I am not gay," Krish reminded Butch firmly.

"Never say never, m'lad," said Butch. "If he's anything like his sister, I'd turn for this guy."

"This is a staff meeting, Lois. No one is interested in your—love life," breathed The Mess.

"Speak for yourself,"said House. "I want to hear about Butch's hot date."

"Never even made it to the bedroom," Butch remembered fondly. "Did it right between the frig and the sink."

"So you can eat off your kitchen floor," murmured Krish.

Butch was delighted. "You asshole," she said, punching him playfully in the arm. "That was funny!"

The Mess looked to be on the verge of tears. Krish was nursing his arm. Butch looked triumphant. And House was beaming. His new team was coming together beautifully. They were getting on each other's nerves just the way he liked it.


	5. Creative Discord

Energized by signs of dissension on his team, House slapped files in front of each member, intoning "22-year-old white male, history of drug and alcohol abuse. Motorcycle accident, no helmet; concussion; injuries requiring amputation of the right leg at the hip; patient exhibited inappropriate response to same. Okay: Go."

Krish looked up from his folder, puzzled. "We have a new case?"

"We have a case," said House.

The Mess was skimming Deadman's chart. "It says Dr. Molar is the attending," she whispered.

"Molar is a leg man," House said impatiently. "I'm interested in the other end."

"Dr. Sprinkle is the neurologist," The Mess pointed out softly. Clearly, she and Krish had not yet learned that such objections were just a red flag to House's bullish temperment.

"As a neurologist, Sprinkle would've made a great urologist," he barked. "Come on, people. Cleaning up other doctors' failures is what we do here."

"Have the other doctors failed?" asked Krish. House made a strangled noise.

"What do you mean, the patient exhibited an inappropriate response?" asked Butch. House gave her an almost tender look.

"He seemed almost glad about it," he said. "He claims the accident was his higher power trying to get his attention. He went into surgery with a smile on his face and a song in his heart."

"That sounds like acceptance," murmured The Mess.

"That sounds like delusional thinking," House said heatedly. "No one finds out they're gonna lose a leg with an attitude of gratitude. No one."

There was a bump of silence as his team regarded their employer's own unfortunate limb. House dropped back into his seat and fought to modulate his tone.

"The guy wasn't wearing a helmet," he said. "Yeah, I know the report says his head injuries weren't extensive, but head docs miss stuff all the time. Then there's the heroin problem and the alcohol problem. He was a mechanic, so he probably spent most of his days awash in caustic chemicals. God only knows what his home environment is like—people like him usually live in trailers made out of asbestos parked on top of a toxic waste dump."

The fellows exchanged apprehensive glances. They had an idea of what was coming next.

"Krish, Butch, your mission is to drop by Maison Hollister and have a look around. Take a radon detector and collect soil samples from the front and back yard, toss the place for drugs, bring me any food that doesn't look right. Mess, you're going to lure the wife away for a nice chat at the local burger place. I wanna know everything: when she met him, how she met him, where they've lived, everything he's been up to. Bring the receipt back and I'll think about reimbursing you. I'm gonna take another look around his skull."

Krish looked surprised. "You have access to the patient?"

"I have access to anything I want to access," said House. "I have an all-access pass at this rock concert. Now get outta here. Shoo. Dig up some dirt on Deadman."

"Deadman is the patient," Butch clarified.

"If we don't get moving," said House ominously, "he'll be a dead man for sure."

-0-

Alone, House picked up the phone and dialed Angie's cell.

"You were facing the road when that dude crashed yesterday," he said, without preamble. "Did he actually hit the cat?"

There was a pause. "What cat?" said Angie.

A peculiar sensation began creeping up the back of House's neck. "The cat he swerved to avoid hitting. The reason he crashed."

"I didn't see any cat," said Angie. "There was a hubcap in the road, but no cat."

House's voice intensified. "You're sure about that."

"Greg. I know every cat in the neighborhood." This was true—and she sneaked food to all of them. "If one of them had been in the road, I would've noticed."

House rubbed his neck, but the sensation lingered. "Where was the hubcap?"

"On the shoulder, almost in the weeds. I only noticed it when I was running up the road to get to him. I thought it was from his bike, but it was way too big. And I thought it might've caused the crash, but he was almost in the middle of the road when he skidded out."

"Is it still there?"

"I dunno."

"I'm coming home," said House, and hung up.

-0-

"It was right around here," said Angie, leading the way. "Oh, look—skidmarks. So he must've swerved here … started skidding there … and there's the hubcap."

But House had already spotted it, gleaming in the sun. It couldn't have been there long or it wouldn't have been that shiny. You could see it when you were still a hundred feet away. So the fool dumped his bike because of a hubcap? "I brake for auto parts"?

He hobbled ahead to where Deadman had come to rest. There was glass from the shattered faring and bloodstains from the shattered leg. House poked around in the weeds with his cane: nothing.

Angie came up alongside him and studied the site.

"I wanna be a doctor," she said suddenly.

House grunted. "You'll have to get your esophagal sphincter under control if you want to do medicine. You can't be blowing chunks every time you see a little blood."

"It was a lot of blood," Angie corrected him, but she wasn't being defensive. "It was gushing out of him. I thought for sure he'd bleed to death right in front of us. I felt totally helpless to help him. But you stopped it. You knew exactly what to do."

"That was just advanced first aid," House said dismissively. "You don't have to go to medical school for that."

Angie folded her arms. "Do you think I'm smart enough to get into medical school?"

"It's not about being smart, Angie," House said wearily. "It's about being absurdly ambitious and ego-driven and willing to do anything to get out ahead of the pack. It's about being a suck-up and hanging in there even when you know you're doomed."

"So you think I have a chance," Angie summarized.

House laughed. "Sorry, kid," he said. "You asked a serious question, and I gave you a smartassed answer. You just surprised me—I never thought I'd hear someone say they wanted to be just like me."

"Not just like you," Angie said, too quickly. "I mean—"

"It's okay, Angie," grinned House. "You mean you don't want to be as big an asshole as me. I don't think you have anything to worry about on that score."

-0-

The lock on the front door to Deadman's dilapidated house didn't even work, so Butch and Krish didn't have to use force or guile to gain entry. They stepped inside and immediately found themselves ankle deep in cheap toys, baby equipment, and dirty clothing. The house was fragrant with the smell of an untended litterbox. And the windows were so dirty, Butch turned on the overhead light, revealing even more slovenly details.

"Whoa," she said. "Ms. Hollister is not all hung up on housekeeping."

Krish picked his way through the midden as if it might harbor poisonous snakes. "How can people live like this?" he wondered.

"Oh, come on. Do you always pick your dirty socks off the floor?"

"Of course I do," Krish said indignantly. Butch laughed.

"See? You are gay! I knew it!"

"I am not gay!" He added hastily: "Not—"

"—that there's anything wrong with it," finished Butch.

Krish spoke earnestly. "Tomczik, I really don't have a problem with gay people. It's just that I'm not interested in the details. Not just about gay sex; any sex."

"Relax, Krish. We're cool. And I don't talk about it just to upset you, although I do like to drive Mess crazy. But mostly I do it to humor House. I have a theory that if I can keep him amused, he might not eat us alive the way he did his other teams."

"Good luck with that," Krish said grimly.

The house was small, and most of the family's belongings seemed to be strewn around in plain sight as opposed to secreted away in drawers and on shelves. Butch and Krish made a thorough sweep in less than an hour, finishing up in the master bedroom. Nothing they found—including a set of works for shooting drugs—told them anything they didn't already know, until Butch pulled a box from deep inside a closet in which none of the clothes were on hangers. She opened it and whistled.

"None of this was in his file," she said.

-0-

Back at the hospital, House took the simple precaution of hacking into Cuddy's calendar to make sure she was occupied for the rest of the day before taking Deadman to Imaging. He was gratified to see that she was currently in a meeting with the budget committee of the board of directors—not a chance she'd get out any earlier than five. But what was this morning appointment? House took a closer look. "10:00 a.m. Angel," it said. Angel was an OB-GYN. Probably nothing but the annual grope and grab, but House filed the information away for future reference. Then he checked the Imaging Department's schedule for the MRI. There was an opening in 15 minutes. He'd pop up to Orthopedics, grab Deadman, and slide him in and out before anyone noticed he was missing.

House was surprised to find he lacked any real enthusiasm for the project. He usually took Foreman along when he did an MRI; not only did Foreman have a better eye for subtle abnormalities, he always fit in a lecture about various improprieties committed by House against employees, patients, nursing staff, etc. Foreman had a wonderfully soothing voice, and House enjoyed listening to him while completely ignoring everything he said

The awful truth inserted itself: he missed the son of a bitch.

He was lunging toward the call button on the elevator when the doors suddenly opened and Butch rushed out, ramming him in the chest with a cardboard box.

"This, you gotta see," she said.

Fifteen minutes later, House slammed his cane onto Deadman's dinner tray, shocking the patient into a higher level of consciousness than he'd enjoyed all day.

"Drop your cock and grab your sock, soldier," bellowed House. "We gotta talk."


	6. Deadman Tells No Tales

The normally voluble Deadman was strangely laconic when quizzed about his three tours of duty in Iraq

The normally voluble Deadman was strangely laconic when quizzed about his three tours of duty in Iraq. "Mosul. Baghdad," he said, when House asked about his assignments.

House waited. Deadman swallowed hard and added, "Fallujah."

"All the tourist traps," House noted cheerfully, pulling up a chair. "Bring back any souvenirs besides these?" And he tossed a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart onto Deadman's chest.

Stony-eyed, Deadman stared straight ahead.

"Come on," goaded House. "A jarhead with your resume's gotta have some good war stories. We're a bunch of slack-assed civvies. We don't get a lot of excitement in our lives. Just give us a little taste—the bloodier the better."

Krish and The Mess exchanged an appalled look. "House," breathed The Mess, "it's getting late. He's just had surgery—"

"—so he's had a nice rest," snapped House. "And he's got nothing to do tomorrow or the next day except recuperate. A couple stories between friends isn't gonna matter one way or another."

"I don't like to talk about it," Deadman said sullenly.

"Tough shit. I do. So what was the Purple Heart for? No? Okay, how about the medal? Don't be modest; we can tell just by looking at you that you're a hero." There was silence as House's team took in Deadman's badly-cut hair, the livid puncture wounds on his arms, the maimed limb with the tubes running out of it.

"House—" Butch began, reluctantly.

"Can't take it?" asked House. "Won't help me beat up a cripple? Fine, you're useless to me then. Beat it. Go home."

Krish and Butch looked at each other, shrugged, and left. But The Mess pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed and touched Deadman's arm.

"Sam," she said, in her feathery voice, "I had a long talk with Britney today. She's worried about you."

House was startled; he hadn't even thought to ask Messenger how her date with Deadman's "wife" had gone. He'd assumed two timid women wouldn't find the collective nerve to exchange names, let alone confidences—his sole purpose in having The Mess buy Britney coffee was to keep her away from the house while Krish and Butch burgled it.

"Britney should keep her fucking mouth shut," growled Deadman.

"She says you've changed a lot since your first deployment," The Mess persisted. "You don't sleep. You don't eat enough. You're mean to the children. You've threatened her."

"That bitch. That fucking bitch. She had no right—" Deadman strugged to sit upright, failed, and looked around wildly. He grabbed a vase full of sunflowers and flung it in Messenger's general direction. House sat impassive and The Mess, having ducked just in time, hung in there.

"About that Bronze Star ..." House began.

Deadman turned on him. "Whaddya wanna hear, Doc? About my buddy who got in the way of an RPG? One second he's there, the next he's gone and it's raining blood? How about the guy in my unit: his head bounced off my chest. Bounced off my fucking chest, and rolled around. His eyes were still open. Is that good? Is that what you're goin' for?"

The Mess winced, but House was unimpressed. "How were you injured?"

"None a your fucking business!"

"Point of clarification," said House. "You bled all over my front yard. I saved your scrawny neck. That makes it my business."

His brief tirade seemed to have consumed whatever energy Deadman could muster. He sank into his pillows and closed his eyes. "It was bullshit," he said tiredly. "I took a bullet in my shoulder. It barely nicked me. But I guess they needed something good to report that day, so they gave me the fucking medal."

He roused himself briefly to add, "What's this got to do with my leg?"

"Your former leg," House reminded him. "Nothing. I'm interested in your head."

Deadman laughed. "Nothin' s wrong with my head, except it's mostly empty."

"We think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder," The Mess volunteered. "We think it might have had something to do with the accident."

"I dumped my bike so I wouldn't hit a goddamned cat!" Deadman said heatedly. "Coulda happened to anyone! End of story!"

House vented an exasperated sigh. "Deadman. There was no cat."

"Bullshit there wasn't! I seen it! A big black cat!"

"You're sure it wasn't a hubcap?" pressed House. "Or an IED?Or a hubcap that looked like an IED?"

"Fuck you!"

"Sam," The Mess interrupted, "have you ever gone to the VA to talk about your sleeping and eating problems?"

Another bitter laugh. "Oh, sure, and have it on my record that I'm bat-shit crazy?"

"You don't think you are?" asked House, truly curious. "Shooting smack and swilling beer in the middle of the day in the middle of the week? Riding hellbent for leather without a helmet? When you've already had three hospitalizations in 18 months for 'accidents' like ODing and 'falling' off a bridge? You were a stand-up soldier in Iraq but went on a self-destructive bender every time you finished a tour of duty. Sounds crazy to me."

"I told you I had a drug and drinking problem," Deadman said eagerly, apparently back in his comfort zone. "I been getting wasted since I was twelve—"

"No you haven't," whispered The Mess.

"Yeah, I did!"

"No, you didn't," The Mess insisted. "Britney says you never even smoked cigarettes before Iraq. She says you wanted to be a Marine since you were ten and you didn't want to do anything that might make you fail the physical. She says you were even more strict about it after 9-11."

"Britney is full of shit." But Deadman's voice lacked conviction.

A nurse hurried into the room and stopped short when she saw House. "Your patient, Doctor?"

"Just visiting," House assured her. "We brought the book cart by; we thought he might enjoy a little Danielle Steele with his amputation."

The nurse gave him a murderous look. She turned a kinder gaze on Deadman. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

A sly look passed over Deadman's face. House noticed. The nurse didn't.

"It's starting to hurt a lot," Deadman whispered. The nurse nodded and adjusted the morphine pump. Deadman began to fade.

"Let me show you out, Doctor," the nurse said menacingly. The Mess leaped to her feet, but House rose slowly, taking his time.

"We'll chat again tomorrow," he promised the patient.

"Kiss my ass, Doc," said Deadman, but there was a goofy smile on his face as he said it, and House didn't take it personally.

"Semper fi, dude," he said, and limped away.

-0-

House and The Mess parted at the elevator. "Don't be late tomorrow," he growled, and Messenger blushed as if he had paid her an extravagant compliment.

He didn't need to turn on the lights to find his stuff. So the remaining members of his team didn't see him come in.

Butch was lounging in a chair, eating a sandwich, her feet once again on the conference table. Krish was tidying up in preparation for quitting time.

"I wonder where House is," he said suddenly.

"Home to wifey and the kids," said Butch.

Krish stopped packing his knapsack. "House is married?"

Butch laughed. "Don't sound so shocked! He's been around some, from what I hear. He used to biff Cameron!"

Krish's tone was nearly tragic. "Dr. Cameron?"

"I know, right? But I guess they were pretty heavy for awhile."

"What happened?"

"Dunno. Maybe she came to her senses. Maybe he couldn't keep up with her. She's almost our age, and god knows how old he is. I guess the new dame is more his speed—she's even older."

"I cannot picture Dr. House with a woman," Krish said firmly. "Or a woman with House."

"Shit, Krish, anyone can find someone if they set their standards low enough. Oh, don't look so shattered. Think of it this way—if even House can get laid, it means there's hope for you yet!"


	7. Carolyn

What was he doing withCarolyn, anyway

The day, which had begun on a bright note, had darkened while House paced the accident scene with Angie. It now gave up all pretense of beautiful weather and outright rained. For once House had anticipated this, leaving his bike at the farmhouse garage and returning to the hospital in his disreputable old Chevy Malibu. He had a dry ride home, and plenty of time to think.

Human beings care about the opinions of others to varying degrees, but no one is really immune. House sincerely cared less than almost anyone. Still, Butch's version of his relationships had stung him more than he would ever admit, even under enhanced interrogation. It bothered him enough to make him temporarily forget Deadman; enough for him to drive at almost the speed limit, so he'd have worked through his discomfort before he got back to the farmhouse.

If he stepped back and looked at the situation dispassionately, the question inevitably arose: What was he doing withCarolyn Campbell? A man who had never been comfortable with what he sawin the mirror, House was drawn to the validation that came with having a hot girlfriend. Carolyn was attractive, but she wasn't gorgeous. Her looks were healthy rather than interesting, and her figure, while slim and supple from riding and the gym, nevertheless showed the effects of childbearing and middle age. She wasn't model thin like Cameron or lushly buxom like Stacy.

And yet ... there was something about Carolyn that made House want to let himself—relax. Let go. Stop trying to control every goddamn thing that went on in the universe. It started the first time he'd crossed swords with Carolyn, thirty years earlier in Bio 108. Carolyn had answered a question from the professor. House had made a typically caustic remark. And Carolyn had turned those crystalline eyes on him with a look of—acceptance. No, not just acceptance—approval. Admiration. For House, who had spent his entire life seeking approval (and when he got it, rejecting it with both hands as misguided or unearned), that look was irresitible.

So their relationship was built on the approval he had sought and failed to receive as a child? Banal. Boring. As an answer, it failed to satisfy.

How many times had Wilson irritated him by pronouncing some female "perfect for you"? Pressed to explain, Wilson would admit that it was because the woman in question seemed capable of spending a few hours in House's presence without running a knife through him. House, while acknowledging the importance of this characteristic, felt he had a right to hold out for more than mere tolerance.

He also interpreted Wilson's constant matchmaking as a way of unloading House on someone else for a while. When Wilson said, "She's perfect for you," House heard, "She will devote all her time and energy to caring for you and worrying about you, so I don't have to."

By that definition, Carolyn was far from perfect for him. She loved him, fed him, laid him, and played with him, but she was also deeply engrossed in her own life: her child, her horses, her home, her job. She was available to him a good deal of the time, but she didn't hesistate to desert him to take Angie shopping, or meet friends for lunch, and she spent hours at the barn fussing over her beasts. House actually heard himself say to her once, over the phone, in a plaintive voice that sounded nothing like his usual sonorous growl, "Well, fine, go ahead and finish your ride. It's just that I brought something kind of special home for dinner." And with a deep sense of injustice, he rewrapped the sushi-grade salmon he'd procured and put it in the frig, dining instead on a tin of sardines that had probably been in her cupboard since the house was built.

To be fair, Carolyn came home less than an hour later, exclaimed over the salmon as if it were a diamond necklace, and prepared a late dinner that rivaled anything he'd ever had at a seafood restaurant. But still. Moments like that made it clear she considered House a big boy who could take care of himself, and that she was not going to drop what she was doing whenever he thought to call. This was so far outside his experience—as a son watching his parents, as a boyfriend whose women craved his presence—that he couldn't make up his mind whether it was a positive or negative reflection on Carolyn.

What about compatibility? Carolyn was warm where he was withdrawn, outgoing where he was isolating, humorous where he was sarcastic and sometimes cruel. About that humor, though ... House had often thought, usually because he'd just been slapped in the face, that Carolyn had ruined him for other women. She was the first girl he'd ever been close to, and from her he got the idea that all women enjoyed bawdy humor, thought farts were funny, and laughed immoderately at dirty jokes. Carolyn thought sex was hilarious (except when she was engaged in it) and so were the lower body functions. A week earlier she had emailed him from work:

"I went to the bathroom and a woman came in right behind me. We both went into stalls, and she peed, full force, for at least five minutes. It went on and on and on. I couldn't believe it. When she finally came out, I was surprised to see that her head hadn't shrunk."

"Why did you tell me this?" House emailed back.

"Because I know you are interested in things like that," came the response, and in fact the story of the marathon pee-er made him feel cheerful for the next hour.

On the other hand, she had complicated rules about propriety in daily living; House was allowed into the bathroom when she was brushing her teeth or showering, but the door was locked if she was using the toilet or shaving her legs. When House commented on this arbitrary regard for modesty, Carolyn said, "You're probably right." But she still locked the door.

She wasn't a pushover, that was certain. Young Carolyn was an ardent believer in consensus building and avid for House's buy-in. Old Carolyn was far more likely to lay down a principle and stand by it, and much less likely to abandon a point of view because her boyfriend thought otherwise.

House was subliminally conscious of this from the moment of their reunion, but it was brought home to him in a forceful way one evening after a rough day at the hospital. He was edgy and anxious to begin with, as his old team prepared to go their separate ways; he had a case that resisted his best efforts to resolve it, and Cameron, Chase, and Foreman seemed to lack their usual acumen in helping him; Cuddy was on the warpath because he'd stripped a gear on the motion table.

House returned to the farmhouse that night spoiling for a fight, and quickly seized on Carolyn's parenting style. He was midway through a lengthy and carefully considered lecture (Why Angie Is Such a Brat: How Parents Ruin Their Children by Trying to Be Their Friends) when he realized that Carolyn had not said a word in at least five minutes. Looking down from his soapbox, he saw that his audience was regarding him with icy blue eyes. His voice faltered, lost steam, trailed off. An uneasy silence filled the room.

Then Carolyn spoke.

"You may cow your poor underlings," she said. "You may cow the nurses. You may cow your boss, if you can. But I am not your employee or your professional inferior, and you may not cow me."

Ashamed, House looked down and away. Two words bubbled to the back of his throat like vomit. Instinctively he fought the urge to expel them. But, like vomit, the only way to feel better was to unload them, and after a moment, he did.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Carolyn acknowledged this with a curt nod, then began to talk in a neutral tone about her day. House half listened while marveling at the novelty of having made an apology without wanting to crush the offended party, either with logic or a brick. An apology was tantamount to admitting he'd been wrong, and that never sat well with Greg House. In his experience, apologies were read as a sign of weakness that the vindicated party wouldn't hesitate to exploit. But here was Carolyn, talking with more enthusiasm as she warmed to her subject, the bad moment apparently behind her. Was she unconscious of her triumph, or quicker than most people in doling out forgiveness? He had asked her about this in an unrelated incident, and she laughed and said she was simply too lazy to hold a grudge. But the evidence was gathering that hers was a generous nature that saw people's flaws and weaknesses but tried to give them the benefit of the doubt.

This was probably due to her upbringing. The Campbells seemed to exist solely to refute one of House's most cherished convictions: that every family is fucked up in some fundamental way. Carolyn's parents were still married to each other. They shared a love that extended beyond their coupledom to embrace their children and grandchildren. Although there had been occasional sibling rivalries when House first knew Carolyn—he'd witnessed some particularly vicious arguments between her and her sister June—these were always settled with tears and hugs all around, and in adulthood they not only got along, they sought out each other's company, and their children treated each other like brothers and sisters rather than cousins.

The children themselves were a revelation to House. Without exception, they were smart, bright-eyed, and nearly fearless. Not one of them skulked around as if bracing for the next blow or harsh word. He had an opportunity to observe the youngest generation of Campbells that summer, and what he saw more or less confirmed his suspicion that in lecturing Carolyn about parenting styles, he was almost completely full of shit.

Because House habitually wore a cross, even grim expression, people assumed that he hated children. In fact, House liked kids; their unedited reflections on life and the people around them could be wildly funny. It was their parents he couldn't stand. Between the ones that did everything but breathe and poop for their kids and the ones who let a 102° temperature rage for a couple of days before bestirring themselves to get help, he sometimes wondered if any human being was qualified to care for a child.

Just before Independence Day, Carolyn announced that she has hosting her entire family at the farmhouse over the holiday. She offered House the chance to opt out.

"It's going to be pretty noisy around here," she warned him, "and while we'd love it if you hung around the whole time, I'd understand if you wanted to stay in town for most of it."

House indicated that he probably would do just that, coming out to the country only for the big meal on the Fourth. Yet somehow he was still there when the guests arrived, and even though he sought sanctuary after the first hour, when the shrieks of overstimulated children and the roiling confusion of meal preparation drove himout of the kitchen, he only got as far as the living room, where he turned on the TV and watched Pinks on the Speed Channel. Moments later he was joined by Greta, Carolyn's elderly dog, her nerves frayed by constant attention from youngsters. Greta hopped onto the couch and sank down next to him with a loud, grateful sigh.

Eventually a child drifted in: Meg, a monumentally self-possessed nine-year-old. She observed him in silence for a moment, then asked, "What're you watching?"

"Bugs Bunny," House said curtly.

Meg was not intimidated. "Hannah Montana is on," she informed him casually.

"Is that right?" sneered House, pointedly setting the remote between his leg and the back of the couch. Meg sighed and dropped to the floor in front of him. Moments later they were joined by her seven-year-old brother Matthew.

"What're you watching?" he demanded.

"Spongebob Squarepants," said Meg, without looking up.

Matthew regarded them both suspiciously. "No, you're not," he decided.

He plopped down next to Meg, but twisted round to examine House with great interest. "What happened to your leg?" he asked.

"Chewed on by a shark," said House.

Another skeptical look. "Really?"

"No," House admitted. "It was really chewed on by a bear."

"Aunt Carrie says there are bears in New Jersey now," Meg added helpfully. As his family was going to sleep in a tent in the backyard that night, Matthew found this an unwelcome bit of news, but he wisely changed the subject.

"Are you my uncle now?" he asked.

"No," House said quickly.

Another long, considering look. "You're kind of grumpy," Matthew observed.

Meg laughed. "Uncle Grumpy!"

"Uncle Grumps!" Matthew amended. Their mother, Jackie, poked her head into the room.

"Are you guys bothering Dr. House?" she asked. The children looked at House beseechingly. He shook his head.

Jackie looked doubtful. "Well, if they start bugging you, don't hesitate to kick them out."

"I won't," House assured her. Jackie left. The children waited until she was out of earshot, then voted unanimously: "Doctor Grumps!"

"Do you want to see grumpy?" House demanded.

"Yes!" said Matthew, and sat back on his heels expectantly.

"I know a channel that has Bugs Bunny," Meg interjected. House handed her the remote. Two more nieces wandered in, then another nephew. When Carolyn appeared an hour later to call them for dinner, she found House presiding over a sea of children, laughing immoderately as Wile E. Coyote took another dive.

And even though the children persisted in referring to him as Dr. Grumps and followed him everywhere, House never got around to moving back to town that weekend. In truth, there was a part of him that had always yearned to be a Campbell; to be another loud, rambunctious member of that unruly tribe, laughing and crying with equal aplomb, taking life as it came instead of strategizing to get ahead and stay ahead every minute of every day.

In particular, he longed to be a Campbell son. Carolyn's two brothers were easy-going guys who both had lots of friends but preferred each other's company. They were irreverent and funny as hell. They liked beer, cars, motorcyles, and high-end electronics, and treated House like an honorary brother because he liked those things, too. They were lunatics who brought boxloads of fireworks to Carolyn's party for an orgy of pyrotechnics the night of the party, and they gave House a cigar for lighting fuses without questioning whether his bad leg could reliably carry him to safety. As it turned out, it did.

Carolyn's father was a little less welcoming. House supposed he'd heard an earload about his various misdeeds and walked a cautious circle around him all weekend, but the older man cornered him on the porch during Sunday brunch.

They sat in silence a moment, as if savoring the view. Then Don Campbell elaborately cleared his throat.

"I was surprised to hear that you and Carolyn were together again," he noted.

House nodded. There was another thoughtful silence.

"She looks happy," Campbell said finally.

"I hope so," said House, wishing he didn't still feel like a 17-year-old idiot in this man's presence.

"She is," Campbell confirmed. "I can tell. So I'm glad things are working out for you." Then he met House's eyes with a look of challenge. "Just don't hurt her," he said.

"I'll try," House mumbled, without conviction. "But you should know that I'm kind of a jerk. So no guarantees." Campbell gave him a level look.

"If it's important to you, you'll succeed," he said, and left House alone on the porch to think that one over.

And still he didn't escape into town.

-0-

House's thoughts carried him all the way to the farmhouse, where he mounted the back steps and caught the end of a ferocious fight between Carolyn and Angie.

"Fine! I'll go back to school tonight!" Angie was yelling. "And I won't come home for breaks, so you can have your perfect house, and your perfect truck, and your stupid boyfriend!" She stormed out of the kitchen and stomped up the stairs.

"Do I want to know what that was all about?" House asked apprehensively.

Carolyn sighed. "On the surface, she was mad because I asked her not to leave dirty dishes all over the place."

"And the real explanation?"

"Separation anxiety," smiled Carolyn. "She's been picking fights with me ever since Jimmy said she could go back to school. It's easier to leave a home where you feel abused. Also, I think she broke up with Nate today, and she's probably wondering if she'll have anyone to hang around with this semester."

House tried to look surprised. "They broke up?"

"I think that's what's been going on for the past two hours. Lots of very intense discussion, anyway. And when Nate left a few minutes ago, his eyes were puffy and he gave me a big hug and said I would always be his other mother."

"I guess Angie didn't manage it very well," House said carefully.

Carolyn gave a rueful laugh and spread her arms in surrender. "Does anybody?"

House stepped into her arms and embraced her, inhaling the warm, faint fragrance of clean skin and hair, feeling her body automatically settling itself into the curves and angles of his own. He closed his eyes, but he did not relax completely.

Separation anxiety. House knew the throat-scraping anguish of losing someone, the weeks of feeling as if your very nerves were exposed, the pain of off-chance remembrance that never really went away. He was a fool to have risked going through that all over again. Much safer to sit, night after night, in a dimly lit apartment, with a bottle of emotionally uncomplicated whiskey and a television or laptop he could turn on and off at will. House often read the Weddings and Engagements section of the paper just to marvel at the moronic courage of the couples depicted. How could anyone look so cheerfully optimistic when the odds were 50-50 that they'd be divorced before their tenth anniversary? When the very vows they took referred to the day "when death do us part"? How could you enjoy today with the threat of separation always hanging over your head?

Carolyn drew away a little and searched his face. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You seem upset about something."

"Separation anxiety," House said dismissively. "I worry that someday you're going to wake up and think, Why did I let this complicated, difficult—read: pain-in-the-ass—guy into my house?

Carolyn laughed. "Don't you worry about that," she said. "I seem to like difficult pains in the ass."

This was true, House reflected. She'd been married for almost 20 years to Scott Barton, a raging asshole if there ever was one, and House was an authority on raging assholeness. If she could put up with Barton that long, it stood to reason that she ought to be able to put up with House for at least a couple of years, meaning he didn't need to worry about separating just yet.

And with that thought, House relaxed—just a little.


	8. Clinical Details

Deadman was very much on House's mind the next morning, as he dressed for work

Deadman was very much on House's mind as he dressed for work the next morning. No doubt the night nurse had spread the alarm—Dr. House was interfering with another doctor's patient!—and the entire Orthopedics staff would have Deadman's room under 24-hour surveillance by now. It would be harder to get access to him, but not impossible, and House fully intended to gain access to Deadman. Equanimity in the face of amputation probably could be attributed to survivor's guilt—no doubt he felt some responsibility for the buddies who'd checked out so colorfully in his stories the night before—but House liked to confirm a theory before he stopped obsessing about it.

He had one foot in his jeans when a thought struck him. Krish, now ... Krish had a face that nurses seemed to trust. Krish hadn't been in the room when Nurse Nosy had steamed in, so ... House yanked up his jeans and went to zip them. The zipper seemed to be stuck. Another one of Angie's pranks? He tried again. The jeans didn't fit right somehow. House liked his pants baggy and almost hanging off his hips. These were almost snug. Were they an errant pair of Nate's jeans? Did they shrink in the wash?

A strange, implausible explanation crossed his mind. House turned to Carolyn's full-length mirror and inspected his reflection closely. What he saw made him shed the jeans and hop, in t-shirt and boxers, into the bathroom, where he balanced gingerly on the scale. He couldn't hold the position for long, but he had plenty of time to register that he had gained almost fifteen pounds since the beginning of the summer.

Stunned, House pulled himself over to the sink and looked in that mirror. His face and neck had filled out: the eyes no longer glowered from deep within dark hollows, the gauntness in his cheeks had been replaced by firm-looking flesh, and the sepulchral expression that he had cultivated over a decade because it made people think twice about asking him for favors had vanished. He looked almost like a perfectly normal, middle-aged doctor. If he let this go on, he'd have to start giving up his seat on the bus to little old ladies.

It was this damned healthy living, he thought gloomily. Meals every day. Treats on the weekends. When Angie was bored, she baked: pies, cookies, cake, fresh bread; and she was bored a lot this summer as she recovered from leukemia. House hadn't come home to a pan of fresh brownies or a batch of warm Tollhouse cookies since high school. He'd never had a weight problem in his life. It hadn't occured to him that a 49-year-old man can't eat like a 17-year-old boy and still wear size 36 Levis.

Carolyn knocked lightly and came in to complete her preparations for work. House turned quickly from the mirror, but not quickly enough.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

No way was House was going to admit that he was afraid he was getting fat. Instead, he blamed his hair. "Another line of follicles surrendered to the enemy this week," he complained. "And we lost ground to the rear, too."

Carolyn inspected his hairline quickly. "I didn't even notice," she claimed, and began brushing her own full, glossy blonde hair.

House watched her enviously. Then he stepped back and took a good look at her. "Whoa! Are you going to work in that dress?"

Startled, Carolyn looked down at herself. "What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it," House said emphatically. "You're just going to have every man in your office chasing you around your desk all day, that's all."

Carolyn giggled. "That would be a quite a scene. They're all over 65."

"Don't underestimate old men," House said darkly. "Modern medicine has made it possible for them to be just as piggy as the younger ones."

"Well," said Carolyn briskly, "since even Viagra can't help them outrun me, I think I'm safe."

House glowered.

"Greg! You picked out this dress!"

True. He'd been drawn to the "wrap dress" because it suggested unwrapping. He hadn't absorbed the fact that she planned to wear it in public, where there would be men, for whom it would have the same association.

And just the night before, House had been wondering if Carolyn was attractive enough for him! It made no sense, which only made him irritable. Now that she was standing in the same room with him, he remembered that Carolyn had nice legs, and if she didn't have Stacy's gorgeous set of knockers, she filled out a B cup very nicely, whereas for Cameron a B cup would be an exercise in wishful thinking. And the dress accented these features perfectly.

House knew that other men found Carolyn attractive. She had once dropped in to visit him at his office while he was shooting the breeze with Wilson and Foreman. When she left, House watched her walk away with normal sexist appreciation—and turned to find his most trusted fellow and his best friend also watching Carolyn, with that speculative look men get when they see a well-packaged ass.

He said, sulkily, "You just wait. You go in looking like that, and that professor emeritus of human sexuality will start sharing his research findings with you. 'Oh, Carolyn, look at these erotic Mayan statues! Let me read you this account of early Etruscan fertility rites! Want to see my collection of phallic symbols?'"

"I can see where that kind of talk might turn my head," Carolyn said, and added smokily, "but what are the odds he'd be hung as good as you?" And she put her hand on the part of his jeans that was getting tighter by the minute, and gave it a friendly squeeze.

-0-

House arrived at work in a good mood that lasted almost until he got to his office.

The first dent was dealt by Wilson, who was in his own office with the door open, obviously lying in wait for him. House tried to brush past him, but Wilson executed a quick inside move and was sitting in the chair opposite House's desk before House had pulled his key out of the lock.

"Cuddy's looking for you," Wilson announced.

"Cuddy is always looking for me. I wish she'd learn that no means no."

"She says you've been poaching on Molar's patient. Did he really throw a lamp at you?"

"Who, Molar?"

Wilson waited.

"First of all, it was a vase, not a lamp," said House. "And second, wudn't me. He threw it at The Mess."

Wilson was impressed. "Messenger made a patient throw something at her?"

"Don't let her fool you," warned House. "Under that timid, mousy exterior lies a real noodge."

The crux of the conversation—the impropriety of interferring with another doctor's patient—was so well-worn between these two that they dispensed with the usual debate and got right down to particulars.

"You fixated on this patient because he made a mess in your front yard?"

"Sure," said House. "That must be it."

Wilson narrowed his eyes. "No, it's not."

"Okay, it's not."

"He lost his leg," Wilson intuited. "His right leg. Which obsesses you because—"

"—it was a really nice leg," said House. "He had tremendous calves, and his knees were to die for."

Wilson was unconvinced. "There's something else there," he surmised. "I've got a couple of appointments this morning, but I'll figure it out."

-0-

Wilson's visit consumed the half-hour House had planned to use to draw Krish into his plot to talk to Deadman. With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, he proceeded to the clinic.

The clinic would not ordinarily be a first stop in his morning. But if Cuddy were looking for him, the clinic would be the last place she'd think to search; and even once she found him, she'd be loathe to interrupt quality time with the patients. House made a beeline to the nurses station, picked up a folder, and headed to Examing Room C.

Inside, he found an overweight woman in her late thirties whose outfit and demeanor proclaimed her to be a clerical worker—or, rather, "administrative assistant"—at the university. She greeted him with a wide-eyed look from red-rimmed lids.

Found a lump in her breast this morning, House bet himself. Or took a chance last month and now her period is a week late.

But he was wrong. Tremulously, she extended a sheaf of paper in his direction and whispered, "I have this."

House took the papers as if they were radioactive. He knew without looking that they were print-outs from a web site, probably or . Let others extol the virtues of the wired world; in House's experience, the ability to search for a disease that fit one's symptoms merely led to heightened anxiety and tense, unnecessary discussions with doctors.

This patient thought she had anthrax poisoning. As a Disease of the Week it seemed passé, but apparently it was still alive and well in corners of New Jersey.

"Why do you think youwere exposed to anthrax?" House asked wearily.

"A letter came into the office—it had powder on it," said Anthrax Lady, and she began to sob.

"Where was the letter from?"

"Abroad." A whisper, with dark implications.

House stifled a groan. "Overseas correspondence often contains talc, a non-toxic substance intended to prevent damage to the paper and ink. Now, let's look at this realistically, shall we? Stop sniveling—listen up."

Offended, Anthrax Lady snorkled back a quart of phlegm and glared at him.

"Good. Now, you work in Accounts for a landscape business. Do we have any reason to believe that a New Jersey landscaping business is a target for terrorism?"

More glaring.

"Who was the letter from?"

"A client," Anthrax Lady squeezed out. "He's coming home next month."

"And probably wants the rhododrendrons cut back and the pine trees mulched," House guessed. "So the odds that he was sending a deadly biological agent are—?"

"I want the vaccine," Anthrax Lady blurted out. "You have to give it to me—"

"—if I think there's probable cause," House amended. "You're an expert now, so you know the vaccine is in short supply, so it has to be rationed to those in the high-risk group. Right now, Jersey Lawn Care is not a high risk group. But if Osama bin Laden declares jihaad against the distributors of Chem-Lawn, you give me a call and I'll hook you up."

Anthrax Lady threw House a spiteful look and stormed out—standard operating procedure in his corner of the clinic.

-0-

His next patient was an 8-month-old boy with gastrointestinal symptoms and an unwed teenaged mother. The baby was dressed haphazardly, in worn brown corduroy pants and a dingy shirt with pink and purple flowers, a pair of tattered sneakers on his sockless feet. His mother, by contrast, was clad in up-to-the-minute WalMart finery; her elaborate hairstyle and fingernails must have taken hours to produce and cost almost as much as her clothes. She was sullen and lumpy, with a roll of fat hanging down around the top of her jeans—a look he'd heard Angie refer to as "muffin top." The baby looked sad and exhausted, as if life ex uterus was already too much for him. He lacked the bright-eyed curiousity of most infants, and when his eyes met House's, he drew up his knees and began, spiritlessly, to cry.

"He's been cryin' for two days straight now," his mother said accusingly, giving the child a hard shake under the guise of soothing him. "Cryin' and pukin' and shittin' all over the place." House gestured for her to undress the baby, and she complied as she finished her report. "I thought he was gettin' better this morning, then I give him lunch and he starts all over again."

The baby lay on the examining table, crying listlessly, naked except for his diaper, which House removed himself. The kid had a godawful case of diaper rash and reeked of cigarette smoke, pot smoke, and stale urine and feces. House also detected notes of cheap wine and rancid baby food in his bouquet.

"Has he eaten anything unusual lately?" he asked, as he gently palpated the kid's abdomen.

"I guess."

"You guess."

"I ran out of baby food, so I fed him some baked beans."

House couldn't disguise his horror. "You fed baked beans to a baby?"

The mother turned defensive. "I mashed 'em up good."

"And wetted them down with Night Train," House guessed. The mother shrugged. "I thought it might help him sleep."

"You thought it might help you sleep," House corrected her. "Having a baby is so much cooler than high school, but there's no reason to let the kid's needs interfere when Mommy needs to party, right?"

A spark of temper briefly animated her face. "You disrespecting me. I'm young, but I'm still his mother, and you gotta respect me for that."

"Why?" asked House. "Because you got horizontal with some zit-faced senior and didn't use a condom? Almost any woman can get pregnant, you know. Women in a vegetative state have gotten knocked up. As achievements go, it's got a pretty low 'Wow' factor."

The spark of temper flared. "I'm gonna ask for another doctor," she threatened.

"Go ahead. The next doctor will say the same thing, maybe in a nicer way. There's more to being a mom than teddy bears and baby showers. When was the last time this kid had a bath?"

The spark died out. She gave him a heavy-lidded look of resentment. "I dunno."

Great. Just great. Parents with any sense at all would at least try to come up with a plausible-sounding lie. House swallowed back a sigh. "You don't know."

"He don't like baths."

"He don't like baths?" House repeated mockingly. "So what? You're his mother—making him do things he don't like is your job. So is changing his diaper more than twice a day. No, don't start lying now, your kid's butt is raw as hamburger, these disposables don't get wet on the outside but on the inside they're a steam bath of pee. Staying with him or getting a reliable person to watch him is your job, too. You're not supposed to leave him alone while you get your shit done." He gestured at her hair and nails.

The girl began to cry, too. "He was cryin' an' cryin'. It was makin' me nuts. I left him alone for a coupla hours so I wouldn't get mad an' beat on him."

House looked at the baby, feeling the hopelessness that accompanied cases like this. He had no doubt about the family's trajectory. The mother would probably be pregnant again by this time next year. If it was another boy, there was a good chance she would try again and again, until she got a girl—for some reason these women were never satisfied until they had daughters, with whom they would start to fight before the little girl was out of diapers. The battles would rage until little Britanee, or Jazzmyn, or Cyndi was in her teens and a mother herself. And all along the way there would be medical personnel to clean up the messes.

"Your son has gastroenteritis," House finally pronounced. "The crying isn't just to torture you; he's in a lot of pain, and he's also dehydrated. I'm admitting him to the hospital. You should expect to stay overnight; they have cots for parents, and you wouldn't want to leave his side at a time like this, would you?" He turned his intense gaze into her eyes. The girl shook her head mutely. But as House reached the door, she suddenly said, "Is there somewhere I can smoke that's closer than the parking lot?"

"No," said House. "But even if there were, I wouldn't tell you. Smoking is very harmful to children." And he left, closing the door on her outraged face.

At the nurses' station, filling out the forms to admit the baby to the hospital, House learned that the girl had thrown a tantrum in the waiting room because the staff wouldn't let her park her baby with a complete stranger (who was wearing a facemask because of a severe upper respiratory ailment) so she could go out to the pavilion for a smoke. Evil Nurse Brenda was pretty sure that the girl was already in the early stages of pregnancy.

And people wondered why he was so cynical.

The next patient didn't help matters. Forty-two years old, male, weighing at least 350 pounds—he refused to get on a scale on grounds that he was only there about an upper respiratory ailment so his weight was irrelevant.

"Fine," said House. "Let's pretend you can't get up a flight of stairs without wheezing because you have bronchitis. Let's also pretend the bronchitis prevents you from getting on the examining table. And let's just make up a dosage for medicine." He got out his pad. "Hmm ... should I guess high or low? If I guess high, you'll be offended and sue the hospital for discrimination. If I guess low, it won't help, of course, but your self-esteem will be intact."

The patient was already offended. "I'm fed up with being treated like a weight problem instead of a human being!" he railed. "I'm sick of doctors lecturing me about diet and not even considering whether I'm actually ill!"

"I considered it," House assured him. "And I rejected it because you don't have a cough or any other symptoms of bronchitis except the wheezing and shortness of breath, which can also be explained by your carrying around at least 100 pounds in excess fat, which has put you smack dab in the middle of the high-risk groupfor congestive heart failure."

"I have the blood pressure of a 30-year-old," the patient said virtuously, "and no history of heart disease."

"Not impressed," barked House. "Obesity changes the structure and function of the heart. Elevated total blood volume and high cardiac output can cause ventricular dilatation and eccentric hypertrophy. You're a poster child for a li'l ol' thang we health fanatics like to call obesity cardiomyopathy."

"I am not myopathic whatever—I have bronchitis!" shouted the patient. "Just gimme a Z pack and lemme outta here!"

"Not gonna happen," said House. "Antibiotics can cure a lot of ills, but they're useless against the fact that you're so fat, you can't see your johnson without a periscope."

The interview did not end well.

-0-

After that, House felt he deserved a rest and secreted himself in the farthest examing room, where he made himself comfortable and listened to most of Dr. John Plays Mac Rebbenack on his iPhone. By the time he made his leisurely way back to his assigned duties, his next patient had been waiting for almost half an hour—a little too long, even byHouse's generous standards. So he adopted the brisk, harried-but-attentive expression that usually carried him through these situations, dashing through the door muttering vague apologies and going straight to the sink for a show of careful hygiene and asking, over his shoulder, "What seems to be the problem?"

The patient, whose left arm was in a makeshift sling and covered with ice packs, shot him a black look.

"My dick fell off," she said, enunciating each word for maximum impact.

House stopped the handwashing.

"What were you doing when this happened?" he asked, struggling to keep a straight face.

She faced him squarely. "I was taking a piss," she said promptly. "I shook it two times like usual, and it came right off in myhand."

"You sure it wasn't three times?" House probed. "That's usually when the trouble starts. Did you bring it with you?"

"I put it in a shoebox," said the patient, "but I musta left it on the bus."

"That's a shame," said House. "But maybe the bus driver will find it and give it to someone for Christmas—you know, the traditional dick in a box." He began to examine the afflicted arm tenderly. "Penises aside, what happened here?"

The patient left five minutes later in a considerably improved mood, with a diagnosis of sprained elbow and a prescription for Tramadol with five refills. House felt she had more than earned a little party.

All in all, he was in a good mood when he returned to his office. His mood elevated even more when he saw that Krishna was waiting for him, his dark eyes alight with the joy of gossip. Krish couldn't even wait for House to sit down before he began to unload.

"Dr. Molar is going to want to talk to you," said Krish. "He's having a little problem with Deadman."


	9. Superbugged

Paragraph Styles:

House was practicing bank shots when Dr. Molar dropped in late that afternoon. In violation of PPTH Workplace Policy 5.37 ("Employees are to refrain from hanging pictures and other objects from office walls themselves, and are instead to submit a work order to the Department of Facilities Maintenance when the need arises"), House had hung a toy basketball net above his desk. For a backboard, he used an old aluminum cookie sheet that rattled like thunder when the ball hit it. In lieu of the featherweight Nerf basketball that came with the net, he used an oversized gray-and-red tennis ball. It had recently taken a dive out the window and landed in a puddle during a contentious differential, and it didn't seem to be drying properly. The ball made a sodden _thdump_ when it hit the cookie sheet.

To minimize the risk of exercise, House had cut a ball-sized hole in a plastic wastebasket with the words "Recyclable Paper Only— Keep PPTH Green!" stamped on the side and placed it on his desk, directly under the basket. When he scored, the ball dropped into the wastebasket, rolled out of the hole and down a chute made of textbooks, fell into another mutilated wastebasket on the floor, and rolled straight to his feet, where he could sweep it up with his cane. When he really had the hot hand, House could shoot five or six baskets a minute, making a hellish racket that drove his neighbor, Dr. Loud, to apoplectic rage—which was the whole point.

No doctor at PPTH liked to be seen asking House for help, because it implied that he really was as smart and capable as he routinely proclaimed himself to be—or that they were as dull-witted and incompetent as he repeatedly said they were. Molar had clearly timed his visit for when much of the staff had left. He hadn't expected to hear Dr. Loud, who was bellowing threats and curses with every basket, and he hadn't expected to see House's fellows huddling over the conference table in the next room, filling out reports. House had handed the job off to them with the standard disclaimer that it was a waste of time, but only Butch seemed to take his word for it; she was gazing dreamily out the window. Krish, by contrast, attacked his stack like a term paper that meant the difference between summa and magna cum laude, and The Mess was filling in her forms with the conscientious precision of a Girl Scout with a merit badge at stake. In a corner of the room sat Chase, who hadn't yet found a comparable hangout in ICU and wandered into Diagnostics when he wanted to kill some time. He was simultaneously doing a crossword puzzle, texting his girlfriend, and drinking tea.

There were more people in the corridor than usual at that hour, too. House decided to keep Molar in the doorway so everyone could get a good look at him.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" Molar asked stiffly.

House raised the tennis ball and took aim. "Kinda busy," he mouthed. The ball slammed against the cookie sheet with a loud bang, followed by an oath from next door. "House, this time I'm filing a complaint," yelled Dr. Loud.

"Oh, no!" whimpered House. "Please don't tell file a complaint!" He flipped the ball off the floor and hurled it straight at the backboard. With a roar of pure fury, Dr. Loud slammed out of his office and stormed down the corridor to the elevator.

House caught the ball deftly. "Rebound!"

Molar cleared his throat. "It's about a patient," he said.

"Well, why didn't you say so? I thought you were selling candy for your kid's band trip." House made as if to take another shot, then set the ball down gently and clasped his hands behind his head. "What's up, Doc? Soldier boy bleeding into his squash yet?"

"There is no brain damage," Molar growled.

"That we can see," House amended.

Molar visibly chose to ignore this and handed House the file. "He was doing fine post-op, but he spiked a fever this morning." Molar gave a detailed account of the rigorous diagnostic and therapeutic procedures he had followed, which House tuned out because he wasn't interested in hearing Molar's self-exoneration; he was interested in the chart, which included notes by nurses and other doctors. House could read faster than Molar could justify his actions, and cut the other man short: "Chase. Come here and take a look."

Chase entered the office and took the file from House's hand. He read briefly; his face fell. "Aw fuck," he said.

"Klebsiella pneumoniae," said House, tenting his fingers and holding Molar's eyes with his own. "A nasty little bug with a thick candy coating that makes it impervious to white blood cells. It can go deep into the lungs and destroy the alveoli, leading to hemorrhage; it can attach to the urinary tract and infect the kidneys; it can enter the bloodstream and release an end toxin that injures the lining of the blood vessels, causing fatal shock. It's highly infectious and resistant to every meaningful antibiotic we have. The one drug that can kick its ass damages the kidneys. Healthy people can harbor Klebsiella with no problem, but people in a weakened condition—say, for example, someone who's been drinking and drugging for months and just had major surgery—"

"We followed standard surgical procedure," Molar began.

House cut him off. "Chase!"

The younger doctor lifted his head out of his hands and peered at them.

"You've been head of ICU for two whole weeks, Chase. So tell the class: What's the greatest threat to your patients?"

"Infection," Chase said wearily.

"WRONG. It's idiots like Dr. Teeth here. You're going to babysit a lot of clowns who stopped thinking the day they got their lab coats, and don't forget it."

House stood up and rapped his cane on the conference room door. "Get in here!"

The fellows filed in and stood at attention along the back wall.

House pointed at Molar. "Five years ago, this idiot almost relieved a patient of both legs because he was convinced he was gangrenous when, in fact, he was suffering from the worst case of foot fungus anyone had ever seen."

"Seven years," Molar said tightly.

"Time flies when you're dealing with morons," said House. "The point is, shortly after that our esteemed dean of medicine asked me to write new protocols for dealing with a potential superbug. Don't faint—I actually put some time into it. Research and everything. And I delivered a set of recommendations for pre-op scrubbing and disinfecting that some of my colleagues found—inconvenient."

"All the literature at the time—" sputtered Molar.

"Aw, don't try to hide your crimes behind 'the literature'," said House. "Fact: You'd been looking for a way to nail me. Fact: My recommendations would've added twenty minutes to every procedure, cutting down on the number of arthroscopic surgeries and hip replacements you could do in a day, and how is a struggling orthopedic surgeon supposed to make payments on two houses, and a 40-foot cabin cruiser, and still make his tee time at the country club? Fact: You did a literature search and cherry-picked every article that downplayed the threat. Fact: No one else liked House either and grabbed the opportunity to vote me down. 'The literature' was just an excuse."

Molar flushed. "If you'refinished—"

"We're finished with you," said House. "Get outta here—we gotta clean up your mess, and you're in the way."

The surgeon wheeled and strode toward the exit, nearly bowling over Cuddy. Molar shot her a furious look and kept going. They heard his footsteps fade down the corridor; there was a pause as he punched futilely at the elevator call button; then a door slammed and Molar noisily descended the stairs.

Cuddy sighed and surveyed her staff. The fellows, wide-eyed, were still arrayed against the conference room wall. This was the first time they'd ever seen House really lose his temper. Chase slumped in a chair, staring at the ceiling. House seemed drained of energy; he leaned against his desk, repeatedly running his fingers through his hair.

"I came here to warn you to leave Dr. Molar's patient alone," Cuddy said tentatively, "but it looks like you've worked it out between you, so I assume you'll be stepping back." It was a question, not a statement.

"We worked it out. Where've you been all day?" said House. "The patient, he is for us, now."

"House—"

He handed her Deadman's file. Cuddy opened it, read. "Oh, god."

"The down side of democracy," House observed. "It works great, except when idiots are the majority. Of course, you had veto power, but we're all about getting buy-in from the stakeholders, aren't we?"

He seemed to be getting a second wind, pushing away from the desk and towering over her. "Now that our experiment in consensus building has left us up to our ass in resistant bacteria, are you ready to exercise some constructive tyranny? Or should we hold another workshop and do trust-falls until everyone's empowered to make positive-outcome choices?"

Cuddy's mouth tightened. "I'll see you and Chase in my office in 10 minutes. Bring your protocol." She left.

House turned to his employees and noticed that Butch was watching Cuddy with an evaluating eye. "What?" he demanded.

"Is Dr. Cuddy married?" asked Butch.

"Why, are you thinking of asking her out? Because you should know that she doesn't swing that way. Or any other way, come to think of it."

Butch shrugged. "I'm just a little ol' former country obstetrician," she said, "but—"

"Jesus Christ," said House.


	10. Pregnant Pause

In the 19th century, the maternal and infant mortality rates were well above 50 percent

In the 19th century, maternal and infant mortality rates were well above 50 percent. The statistics for women who gave birth in hospitals, and their babies, were even worse. An enterprising doctor decided to look into the discrepancy and discovered that the medical personnel most likely to assist in deliveries were students, who often went to the labor room straight from the morgue, where they'd been dissecting cadavers. The doctor suggested that if medical students washed thoroughly before touching laboring women, it might reduce the number of fatalities.

It worked. Mortality rates for women and babies decreased significantly in hospitals that adopted his regimen. But old guard doctors disparaged the new routine. It became a matter of professional pride to ignore the hand-washing protocol. Ego and inertia had trumped reason and innovation. It would be another generation before scrubbing become mandatory. And a lot of women and babies died in the meantime.

House had personal experience with the phenomenon. Lurking in the corridors of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, he observed how nurses and doctors rushed from patient to patient, pausing only to dip improperly cleansed hands into communal bags of tortilla chips and bowls of M&Ms at the nursing station. He watched orderlies disinfect a room between patients, noting that the fifteen minutes some bean counter allotted to the job was insufficient to allow disinfectants to sit on surfaces for a full five minutes—the minimum necessary to kill all potential bacteria lurking there.

He talked until he was hoarse about the ramifications of killing some, but not all, of the microbes that invariably haunt a medical facility. These tiny organisms were all the proof anyone should need that the theory of evolution is not a wild guess dreamed up by atheists. Most bacteria succumb to standard disinfection procedures, but a few always survive and pass along their tougher constitutions to ensuing generations. Likewise, doctors who used germ-specific antibiotics as a first instead of a last resort were inadvertently breeding for drug-resistant bacteria.

The resulting superbugs confounded almost all efforts to squelch them. There have been a few success stories: the most well known superbug, Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is susceptible to a dozen new antibiotics on the market. But Klebsiella, and other so-called gram-negative bacteria, are not.

An intensive care unit, where nursing staff are constantly moving from room to room tending to patients who are by definition in frail health, presents an almost ideal environment for the turbo-charged bacteria to thrive and spread.

House made sure to drive this message home when he and Chase met with Cuddy that evening. The question of what to do now that the bacteria was running amok in the PPTH ICU was handled with relative efficiency. Deadman would be quarantined, his treatment still to be determined; doctors, nurses, and custodial staff in the ICU would be required to wear gowns and gloves when dealing with a patient; gloves would be changed, and hands washed meticulously, after handling all equipment; spray bottles of bleach solution would take the place of ammonia and phenol disinfectants, and surfaces and equipment were to be cleaned several times a day. The usual arguments, the allusions to efficiency and cost effectiveness, simply did not arise. All three people in the room were fully aware of what was at stake.

The moment the game plan was decided, Chase made his escape. The child of a cold, overbearing, exacting father and an alcoholic mother, he sensed immediately that his elders were spoiling for a fight. If preventing the spread of drug-resistant bacteria in his department weren't enough motivation to cause him to flee the scene, fear of being trapped in the middle of a fight was.

House kept his mouth shut as Chase left the room. But the moment the Australian was out of earshot, he began firing at will.

"So who's the father: turkey baster or handsome bastard?" he said.

Cuddy lined up some office supplies with precision. "I don't suppose the phrase 'None of your business' has any resonance for you," she said.

"None whatsoever," House answered promptly. "When did you plan to announce the good news—as you were waddling into Delivery?"

"I expected you to figure it out long before that," Cuddy smirked. "In fact, I'm amazed that it took you this long to notice."

House was speechless: she had hit a sore spot. How had he missed the signs? And a more frightening thought: What else was he missing?

"House. Don't look so devastated," said Cuddy. "It slipped past all of us. I thought it was premature menopause. Imagine my surprise."

"All of us," remarked House.

Cuddy carefully lined up a stapler with a tape dispenser, giving each little nudges with expensively manicured nails. "Peter Boyd," she said.

House exploded. "He's a baby!"

"He's a very talented pediatric oncologist," Cuddy reminded him.

"He's Doogie Howser! He's what—27?"

"He's 36. And built like a—"

House hastily redirected the conversation. "Is he going to marry you?"

Cuddy laughed. "You sound like your own grandpa. No, he's thrilled about the baby, but we're holding off on that for now. Can you deal?"

"Can you deal?" nagged House. "Suppose Doogie's not ready for the big time; can you do this by yourself?"

"I was going to anyway," Cuddy reminded him.

House glowered.

"House," said Cuddy. "I've been happy for you. Can't you be happy for me?"

"If I'm convinced there's something to be happy about," said House, sounding completely unconvinced.

-0-

When House returned to his office his team had vanished; apparently they still believed they were entitled to dinner breaks. But Carolyn was there.

"I hear you've got a situation," she said, "so I brought you dinner—a meatball sub from Gino's—nice and cold, just the way you like it."

"Te amo," said House. He hated hot sandwiches because he was incapable of waiting until they cooled enough to eat safely. Many were the evenings he'd spent nursing third-degree burns on the roof of his mouth, the result of premature congress with molten cheese.

"Te amo, too," said Carolyn. "So what's the emergency?"

"Deadman," House said. "He has a massive infection, and he won't get better and he won't die. So I'm probably stuck here all night." He slumped in his chair and fell to brooding, the sandwich still unwrapped on his desk.

"What is it?" Carolyn asked, after a moment.

House ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Cuddy is pregnant," he blurted.

Carolyn turned deathly pale.

House continued brooding.

"Is it ... I assume it's unplanned parenthood?" Carolyn finally whispered.

"It's insane parenthood, is what it is," House fumed. "Geriatric primipara. She has high blood pressure! And the father is half her age. Oh, sure, he's thrilled to pieces right now. But wait until she's gained 40 pounds and her ankles are swollen like volleyballs. He won't stick around long enough to take a Lamaze class."

Carolyn made a strange little noise. House suddenly took a good look at her and paused mid-rant. "What?" he said. She shook her head vigorously. House took a closer look. "You thought I—"

"For a few seconds," Carolyn admitted. House was offended.

"Have I ever given you any reason—"

"No real reason," said Carolyn. "But I always wondered if there was something between you two ... you talk about her so much ... "

"Because she makes my life a living hell!"

"Because you like her," Carolyn said sturdily. "You admire her. And now you're afraid that your friend is going to get hurt."

House opened his mouth for the standard disclaimer: he loathed Cuddy, saw her as the epitome of everything that was wrong in medicine; the devotion to senseless rules, the fixation with the bottom line, the dread of any procedure that lacked the imprimatur of the AMA ...

... but Carolyn was looking at him with clear blue eyes, and the usual evasions suddenly seemed empty. Not that he didn't make a feeble attempt. "I'd hardly call her a friend. You can't be friends with a boss—it's unnatural and unsustainable."

Carolyn rose and came to him then, putting her arms around his shoulders and stroking his head against her breast. "Poor baby," she crooned. "Why do messy people come along and complicate your nice, rational world?"

House relaxed a little. He could hear her heart beat and feel her warmth under that silly dress. Wrapped. Unwrapped. It occurred to him that between Carolyn's last period and Deadman's unceremonious entrance into their lives, it had been almost a week since he and Carolyn had had sex. House nuzzled her breasts. His hands began exploring the soft, yielding landmarks of her body.

Carolyn drew away a little. "Whoa, big boy," she said. "Don't you have work to do?"

"It's been almost eight days," House whined.

"So it will be that much better when we finally get together," Carolyn said firmly, and tried to peel his fingers off her ass.

House reinforced his grip. "If you go now, I'll be too stirred up to think straight," he told her. He look up at her, all earnestness. "Seriously. Carolyn. You could help me save a life."

She gave him a stern look. "Seriously. Greg. I've accommodated you in rest rooms, on woodland trails, behind a rowboat, in radio station air studios, on a chair in my saintly mother's dining room. But I draw the line at screwing in a fishbowl."

House looked around his office. She had a point. Even if he closed the blinds, anyone passing by would be able to figure out what was going on.

But his agile mind was already evaluating alternatives. Who at PPTH had four solid walls and a nice new couch? High on anticipation, House led Carolyn down the hall to Dr. Loud's office.


	11. Running Hard

Sex after abstinence might not take very long, but what it lacks in length it more than makes up for in intensity, and a good time can be had by all.

Besides, brevity can be a plus under certain circumstances. The blood was still singing in House's ears when he heard footsteps outside Loud's office door, followed by a hesitant knock.

"Dr. House? Are you in there?"

Krish.

A second set of footsteps, then Butch's voice: "He's in Dr. Loudin's office?"

"I thought I heard him groan," said Krishna. "Perhaps his leg is bothering him."

Messenger joined them. "I thought his name was Dr. Loud," she murmured.

"Loud-IN," Butch corrected her. "But House calls him Loud, and it stuck. Like Dr. Molar—his real name is Moliere, but House kept calling him Molar, and now everybody does. Just another reason why he'll never win the Dr. Congeniality title."

Krish knocked again. "Dr. House, are you in there?"

Carolyn was giggling softly into House's neck. He cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said, loudly. "I had a headache. Go on in the conference room. I'll be right there."

A pause, while his team absorbed this information. Then they retreated, muttering amongst themselves.

House pushed frantically at Carolyn. "Get up, get dressed, get out," he exhorted hoarsely, straightening his own clothes and casting about wildly for his cane.

A certain flock of pigeons were coming home to roost: after ten years of obscene and very public speculation about the personal lives of everyone at PPTH, House was determined to protect Carolyn from reciprocation. He literally pushed her out the door, whispering, "Don't wait for the elevator, take the stairs, go, go, GO."

Carolyn wheeled and faced him: "Greg, I left my—"

"I'll get it, don't worry, just GO."

She fled.

Seeing Carolyn get away unobserved, House was almost cocky as he limped into his office. Then he stopped dead. The unwrapped sandwich was still on his desk, Carolyn's coat and purse draped over a chair. His team was sitting around the conference table as ordered, but their eyes were on his girlfriend's belongings. House opened his mouth. Nothing came to mind.

Just then, Carolyn breezed through the door.

"There you are!" she said brightly. "I heard you were in for a long night, so I brought you dinner—a Gino's meatball sub, nice and cold." She turned and looked into the conference room as if just noticing that it was occupied. "Is this your new team?"

House mumbled introductions. Carolyn exclaimed over each new fellow, collected her things, and headed toward the elevators.

House followed, too awestruck by Carolyn's performance to say much. At the elevator bank they kissed goodnight, and Carolyn whispered urgently, "Greg, I left my—"

But the elevator arrived before she could finish. He gave her another quick kiss; the doors closed; their secret was safe.

House was once again in an upbeat mood as he re-entered the conference room. "Wake up, people! Superbug. Deadman. ICU. What now?"

-0-

There's no need to go into detail about the discussion that followed. Suffice it to say that Klebsiella pnuemoniae is remarkably well-adapted to life in the era of antibiotics. The bacterium resembles a TicTac, complete with a thick, suger-filled outer coat to thwarts white blood cells seeking to engulf and destroy it. Along with its Gram-negative kin, Klebsiella also possesses an extra cellular envelope that acts as a barrier against large molecules like antibiotics. To date, there is only one drug—colistin—that can stop Klebsiella in its tracks. It does so by changing the permeability of the membrane itself.

Colistin has an unusual history. Introduced over 50 years ago, it was never subject to the regulations that dictate the use of modern drugs. There were no detailed trials on pharmacology or pharmacokinetics in the 1950s, so the optimal dose for most infections is unknown. Guess too high, and it can cause severe kidney or nerve damage. Most physicians prefer to avoid it.

Most physicians aren't Greg House. He was ready to start an IV as soon as he saw Molar's report. In his mind, the thing was a no-brainer—the odds of Deadman dying from Klebsiella were greater than the odds that he would develop nephrotoxicity, and even if he did, he had the great good fortune of having a doctor (House) who knew his way around a kidney. House also knew a crackerjack neurologist who could be teleconferenced to deal with neurotoxicity, although Foreman was probably already in his pajamas down in Atlanta.

House's new employees were less eager to get started. They were new, but they had already heard some colorful stories about their boss and his swashbuckling methods. They knew that not all of his patients lived to tell the tale.

Krish based his opposition on the fact that cases of colistin-resistant bacteria, while still rare, were increasing, and what if they put Deadman's kidneys and nervous system at risk for a drug that proved ineffective? Butch was uncomfortable with House's dosing instructions, which seemed to be based on hunches rather than published data.

In the end, it was The Mess who sided with House and got her co-workers' grudging acquiesence. "We can talk all night about the antibiotics we should have to treat this," she whispered, after Butch wore herself out with a tirade about the need for a Manhattan Project to combat antimicrobial resistance. "But the fact is, they don't exist yet. We have to work with what we have, and all we have is colistin."

House shot The Mess an approving glance that froze her in place. "Start an IV," he said. "And let's pay attention to his catheter bag. If he takes a hit to his nervous system we might never notice the difference, but piss never lies."

-0-

The night that followed was long and horrible. Deadman was a great deal sicker by the time they finally treated him; for a few awful hours, it appeared that Klebsiella had infected his urinary tract, with the prospect of renal damage that might force the team to withhold colistin treatment after all. His fever rose, and he began a series of mild seizures. House dug in and insisted on proceeding with the colistin, but he spent the hours that followed at Deadman's side, scrubbed, gloved, masked, and gowned, monitoring his every breath and excretion, and thinking.

He stared at Deadman's bandaged stump. House was not squeamish, but at first he had to force himself to look at it. Eventually he managed to study it dispassionately, trying to imagine his own mutilated leg reduced to a stub, a raw ham with a seam running through it "like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face." Imagined his return home from the hospital all those years ago, his stub wrapped in sheaths of guaze that had to be removed at regular intervals. At least at first, someone else would have had to cleanse the wound, handling the stump gently, like a baby, before reswaddling it.

Stacy had never liked babies; was adamant about never having one of her own and dealing "with all that crap." Stacy, an indifferent nurse at best—she was wonderful for the first 24 hours of an illness, then lost interest—begged him in tears to chop the damned thing off and be done with it because she was magnificent in a crisis situation, could see at a glance what had to be done and was relentless in pursuing the right course of action. It was the day-to-day grind and drag of recovery that wore her down. House, who could be stubborn himself, chose an approach that, okay, carried some risk, but was much more likely to leave him whole and healthy, with both legs intact; more independent, and facing a shorter recuperation period. He wound up with both legs, and no Stacy.

Oh, well.

"I have an idea of you that doesn't revolve around either of your legs, one way or the other." Nice of Carolyn to say so, but completely inaccurate. Maybe she'd forgotten their college years, when they discovered that aside from sex, there were almost no physical activities they could enjoy together. Biking, cross-country skiing, running, swimming ... at first she leaped at any opportunity to spend time with him, but after a time she began declining his invitations, and when he pressed her, she admitted that she just couldn't keep up with him, even when he was pacing himself to make it easy. "You start out that way," she complained, "but after ten minutes you've dusted me, and I end up watching you get smaller in the distance, and hating you and your fucking steel-piston legs." It was bitchy of her, yes, but there was admiration in her tone as well, and House knew it, and fed on it.

"House, you worthless piece of shit, if you'd show up to practice once in a while maybe I could put you in a fucking race." His high school cross-country coach, genuinely angry, frustrated—and, looking at his stopwatch, respectful.

"Son, I know you don't want to talk about it, but when football try-outs start—just think about it, will you?" The Voice of God, muted for once by the speed and grace of His Only Son. A rebellious, smart-mouthed little bastard of a Son, but one who could easily set records if he would only apply himself.

For 40 years, House's legs had been his getaway vehicle, his magic carpet, his Get Out of Jail Free card. He ran from authority, from the consequences of ill-conceived actions, from the anxiety that had been curdling his guts from the time he was a small kid. But he also ran for the joy of it. Stretching and strengthening muscle and sinew. Covering ground with great sweeps of his long legs. Powered by healthy lungs, baptised in hard-earned sweat, and revelling in every minute, even at the agony point when the lungs burned and the cramps began. Senior year, his coach insisted on taking the whole team to see Chariots of Fire, and when the seminary student declared that running was his way of praising God—"Because when I run, I can feel His pleasure"—House had yelled, "How about when you jerk off?" so Coach would deliver a slap to his head that would disguise how close that line came to reflecting his own feelings ...

House sighed and shifted in his seat. Speaking of cramps, there was a nasty one blooming in his right leg.

And speaking of seminary students, here came Chase.


	12. Virtual Hell

Relieved at this distraction from his own thoughts, House wordlessly studied his former fellow from Down Under. He had never known anyone who could look as thoroughly ass-kicked by a medical crisis as Robert Chase.

It was around four in the morning, which is no one's finest hour. But as House remembered his old team, Foreman could go round the clock and still look like he'd just stepped off the cover of GQ, and Cameron would still be sleek and alert as the sun rose. Chase would present as pale, hollow-eyed, and withered by midnight. He seemed to exist solely to undermine the image of Australian men as chest-thumping, croc-wrestling, leather-skinned, 'Allo Mate! swillers of beer.

That women seemed irresistibly drawn to a pathetic case like Chase was a mystery House had struggled with since adolescence, and would never fully divine—much to his chagrin. Even Carolyn, meeting Chase for the first time, had feigned the vapors, swooning against House's side once the Aussie's back was turned.

"If I were 20 years younger, I'd be a shrimp on his barby," Carolyn murmured. This was shortly after she had appeared at PPTH, when House was officially still dating Cameron and he and Carolyn were still officially old college friends, so he forced a chuckle. But even though he knew Carolyn was joking, House also knew she had seen whatever it was women saw in guys like Chase, and it didn't tenderize his feelings toward the younger man.

Now, as Chase wearily imprisoned a wayward lock of hair behind one ear and inspected Deadman's chart, House felt the old irritation tickling the back of his throat.

"Jesus," he said, "you look like something a koala ate and shat into an ashtray."

Chase mustered a half-smile. "It's been a long night, but I think we've dodged the bullet. I put the fear of god in the night staff, and they're all scrubbing between patients til their nailbeds bleed. So far none of our guests's so much as sneezed. If I can work the same mojo on the day shifts, we might squeak by."

"Unless one of the orderlies snuck his girlfriend up here before we knew what was up, and she carried the germ down to Peds," House observed, just to put a little rain on Chase's parade.

But Chase was reading House's medication instructions for Deadman, and making little squeaking noises. He raised round blue eyes at House. "You're not being stingy with the colistin, are you?"

"I don't want superbugs doing chin-ups on my meds," House said firmly. "I want all the little fuckers shot on sight, deader than doornails, no questions asked."

Krish silently entered the room and took a seat near Chase, his relative youth and warm complexion providing a nice sharp contrast to the Australian's pallor.

One of the advantages of a long-term relationship is efficiency. Chase knew it was a waste of time to argue dosages with House; he also knew that the older man's presence in a patient's room in the middle of night meant that House was fully aware of the risks and prepared to do what it took to offset them. An argument was averted, saving both men at least half an hour.

House was ungrateful. "You really planning to keep a 24-hour watch on this guy?"

Chase was startled. "I thought we were clear on that."

"You really think he's a suicide risk?"

"Don't you?"

House rubbed his hands over his face—it was his turn to feel weary.

"Yeah. Of course," he said tiredly. "But he's gonna keep trying until he succeeds someday. Why throw up roadblocks to the inevitable?"

Chase was silent; this was another topic so familiar to both that it didn't need repeating. But frustration always put House in a combative mood.

"I know it's hard for your people to accept," he said nastily. "It means having to put a stake through his heart and finding a crossroads to bury him in. It's such a hassle."

"If by 'you people,' you mean the Catholic church, you're a couple centuries behind the times," Chase said evenly. "Suicides can be given a Christian burial. The church doesn't burn heretics anymore, either."

"But suicide is still a sin," House nagged.

Chase was almost amused. "Since when do you care about sin?"

"Sinners get treated like shit by the societies they live in," House reminded him. "Getting treated like shit leads to stress, and there's a correlation between stress and life-threatening conditions like hypertension and jumping off bridges. As a doctor, I have an interest."

Now Chase looked thoughtful. "In fact, the church considers suicide a sin against society because it represents a breaking of ties with family and community," he said. "But the primary reason is that the church considers us stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of."

There was a respectful silence. Or maybe House was nodding off.

"In a way, suicide is a sin against god because it represents total surrrender to despair," Chase added. "If you have faith in god and believe in the ultimate justice and mercy of his plans for you, you won't take matters into your own hands."

House stared at him for a moment. "You've given this a lot of thought, haven't you?" he asked, really curious. Chase shrugged. "So you've thought about taking matters into your own hands."

Chase shrugged again. "Who hasn't?"

House, who knew he was himself widely considered a suicide risk, decided not to press the point. There was another moment of silence; then Krish, sensing an opening, tendered a glossy magazine in House's direction.

"Dr. House. I have been doing some thinking about the Deadman and his situation. A while back I read this article—perhaps it might be helpful in this case."

House glanced at the folio at the bottom of the page. "The New Yorker. A universally respected medical journal. And what does Redbook say about PTSD?"

Krish was a patient man. "Please, read the article. I think it may have some utility here."

Instead, House flipped through the whole magazine. "Ha!" he barked. "Here's a cartoon of a guy and a dog and a tree and a house, and they all have lightning bolts stuck in them, and a sign in front of the house says 'Beware of God'." He tossed the magazine onto the foot of the bed. "The New Yorker always has the best cartoons."

Chase raised his eyebrows at Krish, who looked disappointed. "Coffee shop's open," he said. "Let the caffeination begin." To House: "You want anything?"

"You know what I like," House said dismissively. As Krish was leaving, he added, "Call the girls. Tell 'em there's a 7:00 staff meeting, and punctuality counts."

He waited until the two younger doctors were safely down the hall. Then he retrieved the magazine, turned to the article Krish had marked, and began to read.

-0-

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) became an officially recognized medical condition in 1980, but it's been a familiar side effect of armed conflict since at least World War I, when it was called shell shock. The precipitating factor need not be a war—any terrifying event, including car accidents, rape, or a violent mugging, can qualify—but the rate of incidence does tend to skyrocket as soldiers return home from military action. PTSD is characterized by nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive or uncontrollable thoughts, and by emotional disturbances like numbness, detachment, anger, and avoidance. Untreated PTSD sufferers are characterized by substance abuse, irrational behavior that eventually renders them unemployable, violence against strangers and loved ones alike, divorce, and suicide. And in the military, the PTSD sufferers who don't seek treatment usually outnumber the ones who do.

House, a military brat raised in the testosterone-infused environment of the U.S. Marine Corps, did not pause to wonder why. He was familiar with the macho bullshit that rained down on recruits day and night, from the moment they signed the papers, and which they internalized until it became a test of manhood to suck it up, play hurt, and be strong. Semper fi, dude. Big boys don't cry.

Part of the problem was the nature of the cure. There were anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, and sleep aids, but almost any prescribing physician will accompany the script with a strong recommendation to seek psychotherapy, privately and in group settings. And men who had bought wholeheartedly into the concept of Army Strong aren't going to sit around sharing troubled memories of childhood with strangers.

In recent years, an approach called prolonged-exposure or immersion therapy has begun to gain some credibility in psychiatric circles. The idea is to cause the patient to revisit and retell the story of the trauma again and again until, through a process called habituation, it loses its power to overwhelm. By disconnecting the memory from the reactions to the memory, the memory of the trauma remains, but is relegated to the status of a one-time event, instead of a constant, encompassing companion. And the everyday events that can trigger a reaction—such as a car backfiring, or a discarded hubcap shining in the sun—are restored to insignificance.

How do you cause an Iraq veteran living in New Jersey to revisit old battlegrounds on the other side of the world? By turning to technology—specifically, the world of virtual reality and computer games—to create Virtual Iraq, consisting of a helmet fitted with a pair of video goggles and headphones, a scent-producing machine, and a modified version of Full Spectrum Warrior. The patient describes the events that led to the PTSD in detail, including sounds, smells, sensations. Then he's hooked up to the system, and is plunged into a computerized reenactment that matches his description right down to the sound of people yelling in Arabic and the way a building shakes when it's hit by mortar fire. The therapist adds new stimuli as the patient adjusts to the old ones. Eventually, the patient can tolerate the full menu for longer and longer sessions, according to the New Yorker. He has confronted the core fear that propells his PTSD, and overcome the avoidance and anxiety that gave the disorder its staying power.

Sure he has, thought House. And they all live happily ever after.


	13. Honor System

In spite of the potent triple espresso Chase brought back from the cafe, House crashed around 5:30 and was late for his own 7:00 a.m. staff meeting. He staggered into his office just in time to hear Butch's emphatic voice—"... and her headlights were _on_!"—and deepy, raunchy laugh. Mess and Krish stole guilty looks at House as he entered, but for once he wasn't interested Butch's latest conquest. He strode to the whiteboard and, above the list of other symptoms, scrawled one word: DESPAIR.

"On the one hand, we have a patient who might cash in his chips to a superbug or kidney failure," he rasped. "On the other hand, the same patient's been trying to off himself for four years now. One the one hand, it's our job to cure patients of their physical ailments, and PTSD is an ailment. On the other hand, it's a mental thing—not our department. But if we don't do anything about it, our investment in time and energy goes right down the toilet the minute the guy's alone with a gun or noose." House sank into a chair. "Talk to me."

"How are the patient's kidneys?" Butch wanted to know.

"Holding up," House said dismissively.

"Our role is to heal the physical wounds," murmured The Mess, "and refer him to counseling for—"

"Been there, done that," House interrupted. "He goes to one session. Agrees with everything the counselor says. Makes an appointment for next time, never shows. Car won't start. Kids are sick. Dog ate his Blackberry."

Krishna gently cleared his throat. "It is well established that men like Mr. Hollister resist traditional modes of psychotherapy. The military code of honor deters them from admitting their battlefield experiences have overwhelmed them. To seek help is to admit that they were not strong enough or brave enough to shake it off and get on with their lives. In addition, they are not comfortable sharing intimate thoughts with a group or a private counselor."

He glanced at House, who seemed to have fallen asleep again. "Mr. Hollister presents a classic case of military PTSD," Krish continued. "When deployed to Iraq, he coped well with the stress and fear of battlefield conditions because he had a clear sense of his duties and was surrounded by soldiers going through the same experiences. They held each other up. Between deployments, he was less clear about the expectations for him, and there was no one who understood the automatic associations he made between his wartime memories and everyday activities—why, for example, he no longer wished to go to the mall, or to ride in a car for the pleasure of it."

"Wrap it up, Krish," said House, without seeming to move his lips.

Krishna summarized the concept of immersion therapy and the experimental use of virtual reality to treat PTSD in veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. "The closest of the locations for the clinical trials is my old employer, Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York City," he explained. "I would like to submit Mr. Hollister for consideration as a patient."

Silence around the conference table. House opened one eye, then the other.

"Well?" he demanded. More silence. House laid on the sarcasm. "I realize despair is a little outside your middle-class experience—"

"You think?" Butch shot back. "Try being a dyke in a high school below the Mason Dixon line. The Southern belles and good ol' boys don't cotton to a girl who would rather date a cheerleader than be one."

House gave her a grim, almost approving smile, then turned his gaze on The Mess. She stared back defiantly.

"I'm familiar with the concept," she asserted, "but I have my faith to uplift and sustain me."

"Good for you, sweetheart," said House. "But if I ever catch you prescribing religion as a cure for depression, I'll fire your born-again ass, and Jesus won't be able to stop me." He turned on Krishna.

"Have you taken a good look at your patient? He's a stoner, a serial breeder of out-of-wedlock kids, a white-trash product of one of three or four random couplings between his pre-saved mother and a series of 24-hour boyfriends. So he does his virtual Iraq—so what? You think he'll suddenly put on a tie, marry his baby mama, and become a productive member of the workforce?"

"It is not impossible," Krish said stubbornly.

"Not impossible. But highly improbable," House shot back. "On top of all his other baggage, the guy's short one leg. The odds are much better that he'll give up completely, go on disability, and live as destructive a lifestyle as he can afford."

The two young women were taken aback by his vehemence, but Krish stood his ground.

"I have heard you say many times that you do not believe people can change, Dr. House. And perhaps you are right. But it is empirically true that people can go through periods when one aspect of the personality is dominant, then another. Alcoholics may enjoy many years of fruitful sobriety before their disease drags them down again. A man might lose a limb and spend many months brooding about it—"

"Different aspects of the same entity," House said quickly, pointedly. "Like your gods: creator, preserver, and destroyer, all wrapped in one higher power with eighteen arms and the head of an elephant."

"Dr. House, I would be happy to explain to you the Hindu concept of trimurti," Krish said smoothly. "But I must first confess that I am agnostic, so it would be an intellectual exercise rather than a spiritual one."

House grinned—a crack had appeared in Krishna's polished facade. Try as he might to frame his offer as purely educational, there had been a strong whiff of reproof in his tone.

He was about to pontificate on one of his favorite topics—the fundamentally sloppy reasoning of theological fence-sitters—when he detacted motion in his peripheral vision. Turning, House saw through the windowed walls Dr. Loud, grinning like a gibbon. Loud saw that he had House's attention and put on an expression of exaggerated enthusiasm. He hefted a small paper bag and pointed at it excitedly.

"_Greg, I left my—"_

"_Her headlights were_ on."

House gave his team their orders and dismissed them. With a deep sense of foreboding, he gestured Loud into his office.

-0-

Dr. Richard Loudin was not a man to hold back when he had an advantage. Dropping into the chair opposite House's desk, he rattled the bag enticingly. Then he dipped a chubby hand inside and, like a magician displaying a rabbit, slowly withdrew a lacy brassiere. House knew it well, knew it was a shade of beige the manufacturer coyly called "Naked," even knew how Loudin had come by it. He clearly remembered Carolyn standing in the darkened office, performing that amazing girl stunt where, with a little wriggling, a bra is unhooked and discarded. He could even picture how it was kicked around and lost in the scuffle that came before, during, and after their encounter.

"So I get to the office early this morning," said Dr. Loud, "and I sit down at my desk, and right away I noticed there's something under my couch. 'Whatever could it be?' I asked myself. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it to be a piece of lingerie!

"'Somebody has been screwing on my couch', I think," Loud continued. "'But who? Who would be crude enough to use my office for such a purpose, without my permission? Who is a big enough weasel to bother figuring out how to get inside when the door is locked?' Oh, I had my suspicions. And luckily, along comes that mousy little doctor on your team. 'Was Dr. House in my office last night?' I ask, and right away she says 'Yes, he was lying down in there because he had a headache'."

Loud laughed mirthlessly. "Dr. House had something in my office, but it wasn't no headache!"

"Loudin, what's your point?" House interrupted.

His visitor raised an admonitory finger. "Ah ah ah. No skipping ahead." He inspected the bra's labels as if noticing them for the first time. "A 34-B. The lady in question is small-boned but pleasantly endowed in the titty department. Now, who could it be?" Loud draped the bra across his ample nose and took a deep, appreciative whiff. "Shalimar! The lady has taste!"

This was pure bullshit, as House well knew; Carolyn didn't wear perfume, and even used scentless soap, deoderant, and detergent. She never smelled of anything but herself, except when she'd just been riding, when she smelled of herself and horses.

"Loudin," he said. "The lady's identity is beside the point. You got a problem with me, you deal with me. Don't go dragging innocent bystanders into it."

"Spoken like a gentleman," Loudin applauded. "And fuck you. I repeat: Fuck you. I have been given a gift by heaven, and I intend to use it."

"For what?" House demanded. "Do you want an apology? I' ll give you an apology. But give me the bra and leave the owner out of this."

"Not a chance, my friend. I have evidence of a sordid little encounter involving you, and I plan to publish the details far and wide. You've spent the past six months making my working hours a living hell, and it's payback time."

He had been dangling the bra over House's desk, thinking it out of reach, but what he didn't know was that House really had been a magician. One quick swipe, and the bra was in his hands.

Loudin shrugged. "Well played, sir! Fortunately, I have taken the precaution of photographing the item at various angles, including its location under my couch. I have in mind a series of posters, displayed in various well-trafficked locations around the hospital. Maybe I'll offer a prize for guessing who Dr. House has been schtupping on his off hours."

With a roar, House lunged across his desk. Loudin hastily evacuated to the relative safety of the doorway. "You're a sick bastard, you know that?" he said, in a shaking voice. "You need help, you really do." A paperweight shaped like a gargoyle went whistling past his ear, and Loudin beat a retreat to his office, slamming the door behind him.

House sat for a moment, breathing hard. Then he picked up the phone.

-0-

One of the unheralded demographic trends of the late 1990s was the out-migration of Mexicans and Central and South Americans from the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California. A sizeable number were drawn to the large dairy operations in upstate New York but, finding winter there intolerable, a portion retreated to New Jersey, where they found work on truck farms and operations like the boarding stable where Carolyn kept her horses.

That stable employed half a dozen workers from Ecuador. Most of the boarders barely acknowledged them, but Carolyn had made a point of getting to know their names, asking about their families in terrible high school Spanish. When their wives' work schedules forced the crew to bring their children to the stable, Carolyn installed a small table and chairs that had belonged to Angie in the tack room, and loaded it with Angie's discarded crayons and a stack of brand-new coloring books.

House chalked this up to liberal guilt, and said so. "That's part of it," Carolyn readily admitted. "But it's also a ploy to ingratiate myself so they treat my horses right." And, in fact, the Ecuadorans did seem to favor Jack and Cherokee, bringing them in first for meals, watching to make sure the other horses didn't steal their hay in the paddock. House personally witnessed a scene between one of the younger men and Jack, who was territorial about his stall and greeted intruders with laid-back ears and gnashing teeth. The Edcuadoran entered Jack's stall to clean it. The horse snaked his neck out and snapped at him. Instead of whacking him with the manure fork, the man spoke soothingly to the horse, murmuring a string of Spanish obscenities, and after a moment Jack relaxed and pricked his ears as if listening to a lullabye. The whole crew spoke favorably of Senora Carolina.

Now House got the eldest of the group on the phone. He explained that he had inexplicably aroused the hatred of a fellow doctor, a _fanocchio_, a _pinche wey_ who planned to take his revenge on Senora Carolina. This _maricon_ was going to soil her reputation through lies and gossip, until everyone thought her nothing but a filthy whore!

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. House expressed a strong wish to wreak revenge on Dr. _Borracho_. Then he gave an address, and hung up.

The next morning, Dr. Loudin dropped heavily into his BMW, hit the automatic garage door opener, and backed out without looking, as was his wont. So he was surprised when his car skidded to a stop, mired to the wheelwells in a pile of fresh horse shit.

House arrived at work that morning to find Loudin berating Cuddy in the hallway outside his office. The man was over the top with fury. He listed the many ways in which House had made his tenure at PPTH miserable. He strongly implied that Cuddy was incapable of reining House in. PPTH was an asylum, run by the inmates, and she was to blame. He had stood it longer than any reasonable man would, but it had come down to this: House had to go, or Loudin would tender his resignation.

Cuddy listened silently. No doubt Loudin thought his arrows were hitting home, because she kept blanching, swaying, and closing her eyes. House knew she was simply trying not to barf on Loudin's shoes. She waited until Loudin ran out of steam. Then she said, sweetly, reasonably, "How do you know Dr. House had anything to do with the—mess—on your driveway?"

Loudin spun in place and sputtered.

"Dr. Loudin," Cuddy said calmly, "you understand that your appointment to Princeton-Plainsboro was largely done as a favor to your brother-in-law, the dean of faculty?"

More sputtering.

"If you find the atmosphere here uncongenial, I can only offer my apologies and best wishes for your next appointment. Please hand in your letter of resignation by the end of the day. Thank you."

Cuddy walked slowly and deliberately down the corridor until she rounded a corner. Then she ducked into the nearest women's room, where House found her moments later, heaving productively into the toilet closest to the door.

"Well, I am impressed," said House. "Giving a problem employee the heave-ho while in the throes of morning sickness. Way to juggle work and parenthood."

Cuddy went to the sink and rinsed out her mouth. Then she turned on him.

"Speaking of problem employees," she said furiously, "what bug did Loudin put up your ass that compelled you to wage junior-high war against him?"

"What made you put him in the office next to mine?" House demanded. "And what made you keep him there after I told you he was an obnoxious shithead who was driving me crazy?"

"Because only an obnoxious shithead would put up with him that long!" Cuddy leaned against the sink, bracing against a new wave of nausea. "I thought you two had the best chance of getting along. That's all,"she said.

-0-

"She thought because Loudin was a jerk, I'd get along with him because I'm a jerk," House complained. "It never occured to her that jerk plus jerk equals jerk squared. This pregnancy is softening her brain."

Wilson tented his fingers. "No one else could've put up with the guy as long as you did. And when it blew up, she got rid of a proven irritant. There was a method to her madness."

"There was hormonal chaos," House argued. "Cuddy is losing the tiny drop of administrative acumen she possessed. Between horking up breakfast and worrying about her baby daddy—"

"She's not worried about her—the father!" protested Wilson.

"She should be. He's half her age and at a stage in life when he's gonna want to spread his seed. Not put all his eggs in one 40-year-old basket."

"You're really worried about her, aren't you?" Wilson marvelled.

"I'm not worried—"

"Listen to yourself! Of course you're worried! She's your friend, and—"

"An employee and an employer can't be friends," House stated, definitively. "It's impossible. You can't sign someone's paycheck and be his buddy. It's a fact of life."

"What about Cameron?" asked Wilson. "You and she are friends."

House gave an involuntary groan.


	14. Keeping It Real

_Romantic or sexual relationships between students and persons in positions of authority compromise the relationship between students and the University. No member of the University community should simultaneously be romantically or sexually involved with a student whom he or she teaches, advises, coaches, or supervises in any way._

Ordinarily, House paid no attention to the Faculty Council of Representatives Resolution on Romantic and Sexual Relationships Between Students and Staff, except to make fun of the priggish language and the council's dogged determination to disinfect student-teacher relationships of any whiff of sexuality. But lately he had begun to wonder if the authors might've known something he was only beginning to understand himself.

Coming of age in the anything-goes environment of the 1970s, House had wholeheartedly bought into the prevailing theory that sexual congress is a transaction like any other. That desire was one of many human hungers. That sex can be as free of emotional baggage as the purchase of a hamburger, and as easy to walk away from as McDonalds.

House had had ample opportunity to reevaluate this notion in the years that followed, in his professional as well as his personal life. He had seen that even a one-night stand could have consequences far more dire—and painful—than either party had reason to expect when they negotiated a simple fuck. Intellectually, he could see how becoming lovers could change the dynamic between employer and employee in ways that no one would be happy about. And he had thrown all this experience and knowledge out the window in the case of Alison Cameron.

Worse: He knew going in that they had wildly different expectations for the relationship. House persuaded himself that nothing would change except for a vast improvement in his sex life, and that Cameron would quickly tire of his prickly interpersonal style and move on. Cameron, on the other hand, seemed to be viewing their affair as a leveling agent, raising herself above the ranks of oppressed employee to that of colleague and advisor. She also seemed to think it had staying power; that eventually House would succumb to her gentle guidance and become happier, healthier, and much more sensitive to the feelings of others. His steady refusal to change in any significant way had first puzzled, then frustrated her. He had to give her credit for perserverence, though. If he hadn't ended things himself, she would probably still be chipping away at his crusty exterior, convinced there was a heart of gold underneath.

The break-up had been relatively painless. House had counted it as one of the real successes in his love life to date. But Cameron was leaving soon to take up a very good post at Ohio State, and as her departure date drew closer, she seemed to feel she had some unfinished business with her erstwhile boyfriend. So she asked him out to dinner, just the two of them, "to talk about old times."

House had balked. They had never had what anyone would call a successful dinner date; he would either drink too much or talk about work so loudly, so clinically, and in such gruesome detail that the other diners edged away from their table. Either way, he failed to meet Cameron's standards for a romantic evening, and the drive home was always a tense and unhappy voyage.

Rebuffed, Cameron modified the invitation to a lunch meeting and named a date. House came up with an admittedly lame excuse. She suggested another date. He said he would think about it. Since then, Cameron had reminded him daily, in person or by email, that he owed her an answer.

Now he grimaced and told Wilson, "The situation with Cameron supports my theory, not yours." He gave a brief summary of recent events and resigned himself to hearing out Wilson's counsel.

"Why don't you just go to lunch with her?" said Wilson.

A very good question. Why not go and be done with it? What could happen in a public place? Even if Cameron seized the opportunity to air some grievances—and she certainly had good grounds for complaint—all he had to do was pretend to listen and apologize sincerely.

Somehow, House didn't think that was Cameron's purpose in proposing lunch. On the other hand, he'd be hard-pressed to say what her motivation was, or even why she got involved with him in the first place. The question of what, exactly, she wanted from him had been the central focus of their relationship all along, and almost four years later, he still couldn't arrive at a theory that satisfied him.

At first he thought she was making a charity case of him: "Poor old man with the broken body; I'll sacrifice my youth and beauty to make him happy again." House was convinced there was a measure of truth to that suspicion, but he no longer believed it was the whole explanation, and now her tenacity about the lunch date added a new layer to the mystery. She wanted to talk about old times? Like the time she insisted on seeing a movie together and he'd laughed heartily through the whole thing, not realizing it was a drama that she had hoped would touch his heart? Like the poetry reading she'd dragged him to after he'd been up 30 hours with a patient, and he immediately fell asleep and snored? The interpretive dance concert—Cameron had once been a dancer— that he'd critiqued with typical sensitivity ("Looks like a cluster fuck")? The times he'd become engrossed in some problem and had been late meeting her and friends, or the times he hadn't shown up at all?

He became aware that Wilson was watching him closely. "You still have feelings for her, don't you?"

"Yes," House said solemnly. "I do." He waited a beat and added, "I feel annoyed and baffled. But not in a good way."

Wilson continued to scrutinize him. "Just be careful, House. That's all I'm saying."

And, miraculously, it was.

-0-

Once he'd left Wilson, House filed the matter of A. Cameron in a remote corner of his brain and prepared to relax. It was Friday evening, and although Deadman was still very sick, he was stable to entrust to the team. Two days of complete rest lay before him, and House planned to make the most of it.

That's when the first real cracks appeared in the hull of the good ship Greg 'n Carrie.

When it became clear that House would be spending most of his off hours at the farmhouse, he and Carolyn made some informal arrangements about housework. House claimed the traditional male duties, like mowing the lawn—Carolyn had a good riding mower, and he liked the challenge of combining speed and precision to produce perfectly manicured grounds. He also agreed, without protest but also without enthusiasm, to be the default dish washer.

House hated washing the dishes; hated the greasy grey of the water after the first few pots, hated the feeling of bits of food clinging to his fingers, hated the fact that they had to be done every day. The knowledge that this grubby task loomed at the end of every meal could spoil his appetite. Carolyn had a dishwasher, so all the plates, glasses, and flatware were taken care of, but there were always mixing bowls, measuring spoons, and pots and pans to deal with.

The problem was compounded by the fact that Carolyn had a much lower tolerance for piles of dirty dishes than House did. Alone in his apartment, he could ignore the way the sink filled up and overflowed onto the counters for up to a week at a time. Then he'd hire a cleaning crew to deal with it. Carolyn liked to see clean dishes in the drainer within a hour of finishing dinner. House fell back on the position that they ended up cleaner if he let them soak for a few hours, or even over night. It was becoming a source of tension between them.

Tonight he fully intended to do the dishes right away, but he had recently started an argument on an online community for fans of the Stratocaster guitar, and he was anxious to see if one person in particular was fool enough to question his authority on the topic. As it turned out he was, and refuting his claims took some research. It was after 8:00 pm before he finished, and Carolyn, passing through, dropped a kiss on his head and said, "Honey, if you're done with that could you do the dishes?"

The hint of impatience in her voice triggered memories of other Friday nights, long ago.

"_You have any homework, Son?"_

"_Yeah."_

_Feigned heartiness: "Well, why don't you do it now? Then you can enjoy the weekend."_

"_Yeah. In a minute." But there was a gathering tightness in his chest, and even if he had come home that day fully intending to do the work and get it over with, he felt resistance building ..._

House was lying on the couch, drinking Buffalo Trace and watching automotive auctions on the Speed channel when Carolyn approached him again, ostensibly to tell she was going to bed. He tensed. She kissed him lightly, not noticing, and said casually, "Greg, please do the dishes before you go to bed. It looks so messy in there."

"_Honey, please pick up the yard before Daddy gets home. Don't make him angry."_

Kiss my ass, Daddy.

He checked the Strat community and discovered his nemesis had been at work, picking apart his beautifully reasoned rebuttal. House drained his glass, poured a fresh drink, and let him have it with both barrels: "Are you a congenital idiot, or did you get dropped on your head a lot as a kid? READ FOR COMPREHENSION. The reason you didn't see George using his Strat til '67 was that Brian Epstein had secured a deal with Gretsch that committed George to using them almost exclusively. The minute the restriction was lifted, George tossed his Gretsch and never looked back. Have someone read the preceding two sentences to you slowly until you get it. Moron." He poured another drink and read his riposte over admiringly. Then he hit "Post" and flopped on the couch again. His leg was starting to ache in a way that presaged a long night. House popped a couple Vicodin and washed them down with whiskey. He dozed, waking around midnight—much too late for KP duty. He brushed his teeth and staggered into bed just in time to pass out.

Carolyn was already up and out the door by the time he dragged himself into the kitchen the next morning. The dishes sat untouched in the sink. There was a note on the table.

"Greg: I'm doing the grocery shopping. Call if you need me to pick up anything. Love, C. P.S. PLEASE WASH THE FUCKING DISHES, PLEASE."

"_I thought you were going to bring up your grade in Social Studies."_

"_I did."_

"_From a 59 to a 64—you're not even passing! For the love of god, Greg, are you stupid, or just lazy?"_

Social Studies sank to the bottom of his priority list. Just the sight of the textbook made him want to bolt the room.

House poured himself a cup of coffee and stood at the window, brooding. The thought popped into his head like a shiny new toy: I don't have to take this shit. I still have my own place, my own fucking rules. I could be there in half an hour; let the bitch wash her own fucking pots.

Then he started the hot water faucet running and washed the fucking dishes.

-0-

He was on the porch drinking the second beer of the afternoon when Carolyn came home. He heard her walk around the kitchen. Inspecting his work. Then she appeared in the doorway.

"How was the store?" House asked, without looking at her.

"Busy. Crowded. I couldn't wait to get out of there." A pause. Then, tentatively: "Thanks for cleaning up the kitchen. It looks nice."

House nodded curtly, still not looking at her. "You're welcome."

Carolyn lingered for a moment, hoping for another opening. When none came, she moved quietly into the house. He heard her putting away groceries and starting the dishwasher. He opened another beer.

Dinner was difficult. House had drained a six-pack by then, but that was the only thing he'd accomplished all day, so he didn't have much to say for himself. Carolyn talked brightly about her plans for winterizing the house and he listened in an abstracted way—at some point he had lost the sense that her future had anything to do with him. When they finished eating, Carolyn pointedly did not say anything about getting the dishes done. And House pointedly did not do them.

Instead, he switched to whiskey and played several hands of Texas Hold 'Em online, thrashing his opponents so thoroughly and with such zeal that they became alarmed: "Dude chill out its ony a game," protested one of them. "Goddamned right it's a game. It's got winners and losers, and guess which you are, LOSER?" House fired back. He checked the Strat community and discovered that the object of his Friday-night wrath had written a prissy reply asserting that ad hominem attacks said more about the attacker than the attacked. House left a blistering retort, then repaired to the couch for more car auctions and whiskey.

At some point Carolyn went to bed. She did not kiss him good night.

Good.

This was her own damned fault, House decided. She had seduced him with the possibility that he could be happy; could live a normal life in a loving relationship. She of all people should know that he wasn't normal. Loving didn't come naturally to him. But she kept coming at him with good food, good sex, good companionship, and now look what happened. Like every other woman who had tried to domesticize Greg House, she deserved to be disappointed.

His leg was beginning to hurt bad. He swallowed a couple of pills and drank until he saw double. It was a poor substitute for crawling into bed with Carolyn and listening to her even breathing until it lulled him to sleep, but it would have to do.

-0-

House awoke late Sunday morning, still on the couch, his back and leg cramped and aching. The place was silent; Carolyn usually went riding early on Sundays so she had the rest of the day "to degunk the house," as she put it. She liked to have the dishes done and out of the way so she could scrub down the kitchen. Too bad.

"_I told you two hours ago to clean up this room, and it's still a pigsty. Fine. You want to live like a pig? You sleep outside tonight."_

The threat of a long night outside, alone, had scared him straight for years_._ But today he discovered that it had lost its power over him. _I'd rather sleep outside than stay in the same house as you, asshole._

House poured a mug of coffee and added a shot of bourbon as an antidote to the hangover that crawled over his scalp and curdled his guts. He took it out onto the porch. The air was chill with the first serious breath of autumn. He sipped at the mug, and waited.

Carolyn returned shortly before noon. He heard her enter the kitchen and stop; then he heard rapid footsteps approaching the porch, and braced himself.

She planted herself in front of him so he had to look at her. "Listen to me," she said, the voice of white fury. "If this is your way of saying you're not interested in some kind of—domestic partnership, fine. We'll work something out. But I can't do all the work for two adults, and you can't keep lolling around here like visiting royalty. Make up your mind." And she spun on her heel and departed.

Bitch, thought House. For some reason, the word filled him with a kind of reckless glee. Self-righteous bitch. More glee. Fuck her and the horse she rode in one. Maximum glee.

Like a book lover who cleans out his shelves and finds a beloved volume he had forgotten about, House rediscovered his true nature: the miserable genius; the spiteful misanthrope; the serial asshole. _There you are. I was wondering where you'd gone._ He felt the rightness of it, the perfect fit with his sour and cynical world view. _Everybody lies. No one really changes. Humanity is overrated. Love is selfishness dressed up with lace and flowers. _

He thought of his apartment with longing and regret. For months he had been thinking of it as a dreary reminder of a time he'd put behind him, but now he saw it in a new light, as his refuge from the incessant demands of people. In his own apartment, the dishes could stack to the ceiling and no one would look at him with tightened lips and reproachful eyes. Safe within its walls, he could ignore the telephone and hide out from worried colleagues. In his apartment, he could drink and drug without feeling the need to moderate his intake—not that Carolyn had ever said a word about either. But it was only a matter of time.

Why postpone the inevitable? This was the real Greg House, and the real Greg House faced the facts. He was a lone wolf piece of shit, but it was his own shit, and he had a right to it. Just as he had a right to sit on his ass for the next twenty years feeling sorry for himself. There was a weirdly satisfying energy to that image. _This is me: bad to the bone. Born to disappoint. Deal with it._

Carolyn ended up doing the dishes. She scrubbed the whole kitchen, including the floor and lower walls, as if ridding it of negative energy. Dinnertime came and went: it was every man for himself, cold sandwiches, no comfort food tonight. She watched _60 Minutes_ alone, and repaired to bed early with a book. House drank his dinner and ate Vicodin for dessert, but the leg went on hurting.

He had just posted another ugly retort on the Stratocaster community when it occured to him to check his email. In a way, he expected the message from .edu.

_Chase bet me $100 that you're too pussywhipped to meet me for lunch tomorrow. We could have a great meal if you say yes. The Cochon Rouge at one? Bring your car—I found some stuff of yours while packing, and you can swing by and pick it up after we eat. Alison._

A piece of the puzzle clicked into place: so she was out for revenge. She had never really believed that he dumped her for any reason other than to make room for Carolyn, and she wanted a chance to even the score. Why else would she want him to park his car in front of her apartment building, where half of Princeton—including Carolyn—would see it on their way home from work?

Of course, if a person were looking for an ironclad reason for a break-up, he could hardly do better than to bang an old girlfriend. He felt a soaring joy in what he was about to do. _Now, that's what I'm talking about,_ said the real Greg House.

He hit Reply and, before he could change his mind, typed a quick note:

_Tell Chase to pay up. See you at the Red Pig. House._

Then he hit Send and returned to the couch. He gazed into the darkness, smiling. An onlooked might have called it a grimace, but that was understandable. After all, his leg hurt like hell.


	15. House of Pleasure

The day that followed would go down in PPTH history as one of the worst in Dr. House's Reign of Terror.

The villain arrived half an hour late for work; stiff, sore, and hideously hung over after another night of drinking and self-imposed exile on the couch. Carolyn had tried to wake him on her way out the door, but he fell asleep again the moment he heard the truck leave the driveway. He had to shower in a hurry, when he'd planned to spend some time on his appearance, and even the smell of coffee made him nauseous. It was possible that he was still a little drunk.

His leg was killing him.

House headed straight to the conference room for the morning staff meeting, where Krish was waiting with good news: he had cajoled, pleaded, and charmed the principal investigator for Virtual Iraq into letting Deadman into the latest round of clinical trials. Instead of the pat on the head he was expecting, Krish was subjected to a vicious attack on his faith in psychological voodoo bullshit. House charged him with raising false hope in a patient and his family with idiotic computer games and, worse, wasting House's precious time with his naive whining about _holistic_ treatment modes and helping the patient to _balance_ his fucking karma, or whatever subcontinental crapola he was peddling. House finished off his speech with a few sentences that plumbed new depths for homophobia, blasphemy, and racism that sent his staff reeling for the exits. This was their first experience with full frontal House, and where they had begun to suspect his reputation as a hard-ass was overstated, now they saw that they had been insufficiently warned.

Wilson passed by toward the end of the diatribe. It froze him in his tracks. As the new fellows shuffled out the door, he tried to catch House's eye. But House limped stony-faced to his desk and sat down, deliberately turning his back on his friend. Wilson moved on, but with a strong sense of foreboding.

The scorched-earth campaign continued through clinic hours. House told one woman who presented with a simple sinus infection that she was too damned fat; he told a clearly despondent young man that he was suicidal and might as well go get it over with. To a woman in her first trimester with a history of miscarriages, who tearfully confessed that she was losing sleep for fear of losing another pregnancy, he offered an abortion, "if you think that'll help you relax." The complaints piled up so fast, and the reports were so egregious in nature, that Cuddy came down to investigate.

"House. What the hell is going on?"

House looked down on her with an expression she hadn't seen in a long time. "Your ass is getting so big, it's a local landmark," he answered. "The thing is, your tits are supposed to get bigger, too, but they aren't. Instead, your nose is."

Cuddy flushed. She could take a lot of abuse about her body, but she was sensitive about her nose. And House knew it, which is why he usually confined his insults to T and A.

"I mean, what is going on with you? Are you having—some kind of trouble at home?"

House crouched down until he was eye-level with her belly. "Hello, baby!" he said cheerfully. "You should pray that you don't inherit Mommy's schnoz. It's so big, she can't keep it out of other people's business." He checked his watch. "Noon whistle! Gotta go." And he strode away.

-0-

Le Cochon Rouge—the Red Pig—was a watering hole for Princeton's young and upwardly mobile, located in a neighborhood inhabited by the same a few blocks from the main campus. It served pretentious food in small quantites for exorbitant prices, which most of its patrons seemed to feel honored to pay. House wouldn't go there except on a bet. Since he was going there on a bet, and would be eating and drinking on Chase's dime, he felt just fine about meeting Cameron there.

He arrived early and ordered a double Knob Creek to settle his stomach. It worked so well that he ordered another one. Then he sat back to enjoy Cameron's reaction to his beater, parked right in front of the restaurant like a herpes lesion amidst the Lexuses and BMWs.

He saw Cameron cross the street; register the presence of his car; and turn toward the entrance with a satisfied smile. She really lit up when she saw him sitting there, for once not just on time but early.

This was going to be a great afternoon.

-0-

"He's out of control! Do you know what's going on?"

Wilson was grim. "Looks like our problem child is back."

Cuddy sat down carefully. "Did Carolyn break up with him?"

"Not that I know of. But I imagine she will by dinner time. I checked his calendar—Cameron has blocked off the rest of the day for 'Lunch'."

Cuddy groaned. "I had this fantasy, you know? that he might make this one last, at least until I get back from maternity leave. Can't you say something to him?"

"Of course I could. But he'd have to let me get close enough so he could hear me."

Another groan. "Wilson. Please. My OB says I've got to lower my stress levels or she'll hospitalize me until the kid's first birthday. Do something—anything."

"I'm giving it my best shot," Wilson said unhappily, "but you know House. When he's decided to do something self-destructive, he usually succeeds."

-0-

The second Knob Creek had created a pleasant ring of numbness around House; he could see Cameron sitting opposite him, could hear her voice, but what she was saying was unimportant. Instead of struggling to listen he watched her, pondering the vagaries of sexual attraction.

Stacy in tight, torn jeans and one of his old shirts, painting the bathroom. Cuddy in shorts and a t-shirt, slick with sweat from her morning run. Carolyn with smudges of mascara under her eyes, her body warm and soft under her ratty old robe. In general, women were most attractive to House when they seemed least interested in attracting him. Cameron, on the other hand ...

She had arrived at PPTH looking conscientiously meek and mousy, as if determined to downplay her looks. Then he'd invited her to fill in for Wilson for an evening out, and she reassumed her true identity as a gorgeous young woman. It scared the hell out of him. _All this for me?_

He found this new Cameron alluring, but also irritating. She acquired a new self-confidence, looking him right in the eye, demanding his surrender. _I am a beautiful woman. You must look at me. You will love me. _Just the kind of approach that made him stubborn: _No, I don't. No, I won't._

Now, as she leaned toward him, drawing him to her with her eyes, her sweet hot body in clingy, low-necked white, he felt stimulated, but stimulated against his will. The effect was irritating, not erotic. Catching a whiff of her over the appetizers, he thought, Cameron was always big on perfumes, body sprays, scented moisturizers. I won't have to drop any hints for Carolyn to figure things out; I just need to stand upwind of her, and she'll know I've been bumping up against something I shouldn't.

House shook his head, trying to clear it for action.

"Something wrong?" Cameron asked.

"No. Nothing. Hey, this is a celebration, right? Let's celebrate." He ordered a bottle of Piper Heidsieck and, when it came, raised his glass in a toast: "To Robert Chase, whose touching and unwarranted faith in mankind made this lunch possible."

This wasn't the toast Cameron had in mind, but she drank anyway. The champagne was on top of a very strong Cosmopolitan. Cameron weighed less than a ham sandwich and didn't hold her drink well. Now she accepted a refill and asked, between sips, "How is Karen?"

"Carolyn."

"Carolyn!" Cameron giggled. "Was she okay with our—date?"

House shrugged, and Cameron leaned closer. "You didn't tell her!"

"We don't tell each other everything. I don't know what she's having for lunch, either."

Cameron sat back in her chair and regarded him solemnly. "Don't get me wrong, Greg. I _like_ Carolyn. God, I hope I look half as good in twenty years!"

This was pretty thick, even given alcohol on top of an empty stomach. House couldn't help smiling.

Encouraged, Cameron leaned in again. "You still care for me, don't you?" she asked huskily. This was a little too direct; House instinctively pulled away. Cameron caught his hand and held it with surprising strength.

"I know you're with someone else," she breathed, "but honestly, don't you feel like we belong together? Don't you think we'll get together in the end? Someday?"

"I think you like to think that," House noted dryly. "God knows why."

Cameron dropped his hand and regarded him narrowly. "You don't really expect this thing to last." It was a statement, not a question. "You've got one foot out the door already."

"What are you talking about?"

"Occam's Razor," said Cameron, neatly inserting a hiccup between the two syllables of the surname. "If you wanted to live with her, you'd pack up your apart—hic!—apartment and move in."

House slumped a little.

"What can I say?" he asked. "When you're logical, you're right."


	16. House of House

They decided the appetizers had been so filling, they didn't need lunch. Cameron repaired to the ladies room to do whatever it was that women do in there. House ordered another Knob Creek and considered his To Do list.

First they would go to Cameron's place, where he would have to be charming enough to get into her pants, but not so charming that he got re-entangled with her. No problem: House was a genius at escaping from a woman's bed in such a way that she never wanted to see him again.

Then on to the farmhouse to let Carolyn know she'd been cheated on. Evacuate his belongings as quickly as possible. Shit—his bike was at the farmhouse, too. He'd have to get Wilson to drive him out tomorrow to pick it up. It seemed like a lot of work.

Then back to his apartment—his dark, silent apartment—where he could sit and drink and drug and brood until his liver was shot or his brain was poached in alcohol, or both.

Then there would be an exit interview with Wilson. After ten years, House could almost predict, word for word, how that would go.

"And you screwed things up with Carolyn because ... ?"

"She kept asking me to do the dishes."

As a rationale for drastic action, it lacked a certain punch.

Christ, his leg hurt! House had already taken a day's worth of Vicodin, but he broke out the vial and shook out two more. Then he paused. Hydrocodone has a negative effect on the sex life, dulling pleasure just as effectively as it dulls pain, so there's no payoff for the user. It was supremely frustrating, and House made it a matter of policy to abstain from pills for at least four hours before hitting the sheets.

He became aware of the music playing in the background. The tunes had been more or less contemporary during lunch service. As the lunch crowd dwindled and the demographic shifted, the music transitioned to Classic Rock, designed to appeal to the kind of Baby Boomer who sat around in bars at one o'clock in the afternoon. Right now they were playing the Stones' "Waiting on a Friend," an oldie that even House had come to regard as a chestnut:

Don't need a whore/don't need no booze

Don't need a virgin priest

But I need someone I can cry to/I need someone to protect

Making love and breakin' hearts/it is a game for youth ... "

Mick didn't listen to his own advice; he'd sired a kid on a model young enough to be his daughter, when he was still tied up with Jerry Hall and old enough to be a grandfather. Was a grandfather, in fact. House had recently seen an article on Martin Scorcese's new documentary about the Stones. Scorcese had had to pay attractive young women to sit in the front rows at a concert and act excited about the elderly rockers on stage, who were strutting around like they were still 25. The girls left as soon as they could. It was the saddest thing House had ever read.

"House. Two people can disagree—and not change each other's mind—and still hang around together." Wilson again, on the occasion of a quarrel that House had assumed was the deathblow to their friendship. He couldn't even remember what it was about. Something trivial—something not worth ending a good relationship over.

What Wilson had said was news to House, who had been raised by a take-no-prisoners father and a mother dedicated to keeping the peace at all costs. House had absorbed certain worldviews from dear old Dad. Anyone who opposes me is the enemy. An enemy must be utterly destroyed, so there is no risk of a rematch. Compromise is for losers; forgiveness is for suckers. Life is a zero-sum game, and the only goal worth pursuing is to win. Not the best training for successful relationships, unless you found yourself a doormat like dear old Mom.

Cameron had finally emerged from the bathroom and was striding towards him. She looked young and beautiful, if a little tipsy, and any man in his right mind would put away the pills and spend a delightful afternoon in her bed, hang the consequences. Right?

House was no longer sure about that.

The sound system was now playing Tracy Chapman:

If you knew that love can break your heart

When you're down so low you cannot fall

Would you change? /Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?

How many losses? How much regret?

What chain reaction would cause an effect?

Makes you turn around/Makes you try to explain,

Makes you forgive and forget/Makes you change?

No one really changes, House stubbornly insisted to himself. But was it possible that character strengths and defects could wax and wane, dominate then subside, so that even a deeply flawed, hard, and cynical man might find a measure of peace now and then? Even sustain it for a few years?

If everything you think you know,

Makes your life unbearable,

Would you change?

Would you change?

And then, like a switch had been thrown, House was tired. Tired of the dramatics that followed his misadventures; tired of inflicting pain on others; and above all, tired of inflicting pain on himself. Bored with the romantic, troubled loner act, and bored with self-pity. Maybe it was all the booze; maybe it was fatigue. But today at least, he just wasn't up to being a complete jerk.

Which is not to say he couldn't be a semi-jerk. Cameron was wearing a smile composed of 85 percent triumph, the kind of smile that appeared when she was sure she had him where she wanted him. It rankled, the way it always had, and when she was close enough to see what he was doing, House popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the melted ice from his glass—a signal that she knew meant that as far as he was concerned, business hours were over for the day. Then he stood and collected his coat and cane.

Cameron approached him, looking uncertain. "Well," she said, smiling tentatively, "you're raring' to go!"

House squinted into the middle distance. "Yeah. Well. I have to get back. Got a meeting with Cuddy about some team-building exercises, and I need time to prep. You know how she gets when you're late to a meeting. And now that she's breeding, it's a festival of hormone-driven overreaction."

This was so transparent a lie that it amounted to an insult. House never cared if he was on time for meeting unless it was literally a matter of life or death. His disdain for HR-initiated endeavors like team building was fully on the record. And Cuddy had ceased to expect him to show up at the appointed hour long ago.

Cameron looked stricken. Then she rallied. "What about your things?"

"Keep 'em," House said, knowing they consisted of a textbook or two. "They'll remind you of everything you learned from me."

She threw him a look of outrage. "You bastard."

House smiled ruefully. "You always were a quick study."

-0-

His car was still parked, albeit crookedly, right in front of the restaurant, but House was in a good a mood and didn't want to risk spoiling it with a run-in with the cops over blood-alcohol levels. He drifted down the sidewalk, barely feeling his own feet, to the bus stop for the hospital shuttle. He'd come back for the car later, when Cameron would have presumably cleared out. That they had parted on less-than-friendly terms was an interesting but untroubling thought. He had achieved the perfect buzz, and nothing bothered him much.

His seatmate on the bus was a graying hippie, who was listening to Van Morrison on his Walkman (who owned a Walkman anymore?). He had it cranked loud enough so House could hear every word:

Let's enjoy it while we can

Help me share my load

From the dark end of the street

To the bright side of the road

Longtime hospital staffers went on red alert as House passed through the lobby, but he only nodded and smiled at them. He floated into his office, let down the blinds, set his footstool to the optimal distance from his chair, and proceeded to sleep off the Knob Creek and champagne until quitting time.

Wilson and Cuddy, apprised of his return, sneaked past to have a look.

"He was back before 1:30," Cuddy marveled. "Of course, that's plenty of time for bad behavior, but—"

"No bad behavior," Wilson said authoritatively. "They had drinks—lots of drinks. A few snacks. Then there was some kind of disagreement, and he left. Caught the shuttle back to campus, and here he is."

"How do you know all this?" asked Cuddy.

"I have ways," said Wilson, trying not to look smug.

At around five o'clock House woke, feeling worse for wear but not as badly as he deserved to feel after a liquid lunch. He ambled into the conference room and laved cold water on his face until he felt alert enough to go back downtown. As he was toweling off, Wilson entered.

"How're you feeling?" he asked.

"Virtuous," said House.

Wilson snorted and turned to leave.

"Wilson!" called House.

He paused in the doorway. "Yeah?"

"Drive me to my car. It's in front of the Hog."

"Sure."

"And Wilson?"

His friend turned expectantly.

"Next time you send one of your kindergartners to spy on me, tell him to take off his hospital ID first."

Wilson sighed.

House grinned. "What were you planning to do if I went through with it? Break down the apartment door to preserve my chastity?"

Another sigh. "I was going to have Krish page you." House looked aghast, and Wilson quickly added, "I wasn't going to tell him why!"

House said, with as much sincerity as he had ever mustered, "Wilson, you are really and truly my very best friend."

-0-

His good mood continued as he drove to the farmhouse. It took him a few miles to identify the source, but it appeared that he was basking in the unfamiliar glow of having done something right for himself for a change. Maybe even he was starting to think he was worth saving.

The kitchen lights were on. House stood for a moment, evaluating the pros and cons of going in; of taking up this particular life, of opening himself to future conflict and risking loss. Then he hurried up the steps and opened the door.

"Honey," he called—only half joking—"I'm home!"


	17. Early Evening

Carolyn was standing at the refrigerator when he entered, but she closed the door and looked him over with mild astonishment.

"You're in a good mood," she observed.

House enveloped her in a bear hug, kissed her thoroughly, and copped a quick feel to let her know that whatever their past disagreements, all was forgiven.

"I had a nap," he said.

Over dinner, he gave a sanitized version of his farewell luncheon with Cameron. "It wasn't as much fun as Foreman's going-away party," said House. He and team had gone to a riverside restaurant, where they drank multiple mojitos and House bet Foreman $200 he couldn't remember all the words to Notorious B.I.G.'s "Who Shot Ya." Foreman took the bet and began to rap, getting louder and more wound up as he went along:

I switches all that, cock-sucker G's up

One false move, get swiss cheesed up

Clip to Tec, respect I demand it

Slip and break the 11th Commandment

Thou shalt not fuck with raw C-Poppa

Feel a thosand deaths when I drop ya ...

The other patrons, all upper-middle-class white people, shrank away in alarm, and the bartender warned them twice to keep it down before he ejected them from the premises. Out on the sidewalk House willingly handed over two bills, remarking that he had paid more to be entertained far less. Foreman took it as a compliment and shook House's hand fervently before wandering off to deposit a great deal of white rum and lime juice into the river, upstream from the restaurant and the crowd sitting out on its deck.

"Lunch went okay, but she seemed kind of sore at me," House said vaguely.

"Was it something you said?" This could have been sarcasm, but Carolyn looked merely looked inquisitive.

"I think it was something I did. Or didn't do." They were skating perilously close to the truth, and his instinct was to say or do something to change the subject. But something in Carolyn's face gave House permission to press on.

"I think she was hoping for a romantic send-off." There. It was on the table. Let Carolyn make of it what she would.

Unfortunately, Carolyn decided to mull it over before responding, which unnerved him so much that he rushed in to fill the silence.

"I didn't—of course—and that's what pissed her off. It was the problem all along. She's used to guys falling all over her, and she got hung up on me because I didn't. The more I held back, the more she was determined to hang my hide on her wall before she moved on. It was Darlene the Teen Queen all over."

This was a reference to the captain of the cheerleading squad the year House was a senior in high school. He was new to the school, and had recently grown 8 inches and filled out nicely for a 16-year-old. Darlene and her posse decided he was the perfect Winter Prom escort for their tallest member and launched a charm offensive that he couldn't seem to defuse no matter how crudely he spoke or behaved. They would ambush him at his locker and flirt with him relentlessly, not listening when he cited research that human females were more receptive to males at certain times of the month and asked them about their menstrual cycles. They gathered to watch him at cross-country practice and cheered for him even when he flipped them off. They freaked him out.

He only got rid of them after a pep rally where Darlene grabbed the microphone and shouted, "I want everyone to really show their school spirit now—that means you, too, Greg House!" House waited until the noise subsided and said, in a carrying voice, "Why don't you kiss my ass, Darlene?" Darlene wailed, swooned, and was carried off the field by her mortified squad; the principal made a special trip up the bleachers to cuff House on the head; and that was the end of that.

Carolyn knew the story. "I don't think that's fair, Greg," she said. "I think Allison really cares about you. At the hospital picnic this summer, she made a point of talking to me, and went into a lot of detail about how I should take care of you. Maybe she was a little teen-queeny, but maybe that's the only way she knows how to attract men. It's probably been working fine for her since she was 15, so she never learned any other way. A lot of people never really make it out of high school, you know." She shot him a meaningful look.

House took the point. "Are you really that understanding?" he asked.

She laughed. "God, no. When she implied that it was your self-destructive nature that made you choose a dried-up crone like me over her sweet fertile self, I wanted to bitch-slap her. But she'd had a few beers, and she wasn't editing herself. That's all."

House decided to switch channels. He nodded at her outfit. "You had a good ride tonight?

Carolyn groaned. "Jack was in one of his moods. We did nothing but fight from the minute I got on. He goes for days and days being good, and I start to think we're getting somewhere; then all of a sudden he decides not to cooperate anymore: 'You're not the boss of me' stuff. It's frustrating."

"You ever think about getting rid of him; getting a horse that gives you less trouble?"

She laughed. "About once a week!"

Casually: "You ever think about getting rid of me?"

Carolyn smiled and took his hand. "About once a month."

And yet, thought House, he was still here.

-0-

After dinner House went straight to the sink and began filling it with soapy water. Carolyn cleared the table and dried the dishes. Usually she left them in the rack to dry, but they were in the middle of a good conversation and she seemed reluctant to leave.

He was rinsing the last pan when he said, squinting out the window into the dark back yard, "I was thinking of telling Pavlovna that I'm moving out at the end of the month." He studied her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her reaction.

Carolyn, her forehead puckered, didn't answer right away. House felt prickles of alarm along his legs and arms. It occured to him that she had never said anything one way or the other about his moving in for good.

"If you think it's too soon..." he began.

She was startled. "No! I was just trying to imagine where we'd put the piano."

House kissed the worry lines on her forehead. "It's such a small living room," she continued.

"We could knock out that back wall and extend it into the back porch, like you said you're always saying you want to do," House said cautiously. He thought, Am I actually making long-range plans with someone?

"That would be beautiful!" Enthusiasm lent energy to her voice. "Like a conservatory! But won't you miss having a place to stay in town when you need to work late?"

"I can sleep on Wilson's couch," House pointed out.

"Maybe you should get a couch of your own."

"What do I need a couch for?" asked House. "I've got Wilson's."

Carolyn laughed again and put her arms around him. She touched his face. "You look tired. You should try to get to bed early tonight."

He did a quick calculation—it was after seven, nearly six hours since the last pills—and gave her a flirtatious look. "Tuck me in?"

By way of an answer, she smiled and turned toward the bedroom. House stood for a moment, thinking about how the day had turned out so differently from what he'd expected. Then he hurried after Carolyn. The rewards of self-analysis are manifold, but they pale beside the rewards of a hot, sweet entanglement with a loving, willing woman, and he challenged the philosophers to prove otherwise.


	18. Therapy

_Four weeks later ..._

The PI for the Virtual Iraq trials was not enchanted to meet Dr. Gregory House.

House's one consult at Cornell was months ago and had lasted only a week, but it was still spoken of in tones of awe and affront by the faculty, and Dr. Francille French had clearly been privy to those conversations. A tall, severly attractive middle-aged black woman and a no-nonsense researcher, she had been expecting Dr. Ramakrishnan and one patient, and she wasn't happy to see that House had tagged along.

Nevertheless, she led the trio from Princeton to her lab with considerable grace, giving them a quick history of the program as they went.

"The first virtual-reality exposure therapy I'm aware of was Virtual Vietnam, in the late 1990s," said Dr. French. "It was used to treat Vietnam vets with PTSD. They were are handful of hard-core cases; they'd been through 30 years of multiple interventions without responding to any of them. All of them showed significant improvement with this program. We started using virtual-reality exposure therapy at Cornell in the 1990s, to treat patients in our burn unit—most of them firefighters. Then, when 9-11 happened, we created a new version for people who had worked in the World Trade Center. Now the focus is on soldiers returning from Iraq. There will be significant demand: we're anticipating that one in five Iraq vets will require treatment for PTSD."

On hearing this, Deadman, who had been slumped in his wheelchair and almost mute since they'd picked him up at the Manhattan veterans hospital, sat up a little straighter and started taking an interest. This was his second session with the Virtual Iraq group. The first had been a prolonged interview, in which the therapist kindly but firmly led him to recall his experiences in the Middle East, from the smell of the marketplace to the sound of a car bomb exploding. He told Krish the whole thing sucked dead dick, but he kept his second appointment.

"Veterans represent a departure for us," Dr. French continued, as they entered the lab. "The firefighters and 9-11 patients experienced severe trauma, of course, but it was of relatively short duration, and the priority was survival. In a battleground situation, the patient experiences multiple stresses over a prolonged period, while playing a role in which he is expected to put aside concern for his personal safety in favor of goals set by faceless superiors."

It took some persuading to get Deadman to consent to the experiment. He didn't want to be separated from his family for two months. He wasn't a fan of psychotherapy in any format. He balked at the implication that he was suffering from mental illness. And, House suspected, he wanted to be free to off himself if the PTSD symptoms overwhelmed him again.

Everyone credited Deadman's final acquiescence to Krish, who kept talking to him in a warm rich voice about the program's good track record and the soldiers who had tried it and were living good lives again, able to get and keep jobs and enjoy their families. Krish wasn't so sure. As he remembered the scene, he was beginning to think it was a lost cause when House spoke up.

"Deadman. Don't be a douche," said House. "Give it a chance. If it works, great. If it doesn't, I'll help you try something else." It was an innocuous offer, but the two men exchanged a look that made Krishna very uneasy.

"What the fuck," Deadman said at last. "I gotta sit on my ass for 12 weeks anyway. Might as well play video games while I'm at it."

They entered the lab, and Deadman was wheeled away for a private interview with the therapist. House wandered around the room, poking at the equipment and asking obnoxious questions until Dr. French offered to let him try Virtual Iraq for himself.

She sat him in a chair that had been placed over a device that transmits the feel of sound waves, and helped him put on headphones and a helmet with 3-D video screens in place of the visor.

"The therapist controls the experience, making it more and less intense according to the patient's responses," said Dr. French. "You tell me how much stimulus you are up for, and I'll adjust the inputs accordingly."

"Gimme the works," said House.

He was assigned to the role of a soldier driving a Humvee. There was a soldier in the passenger seat and another in the back seat, and in the rearview mirror he could see the legs of the gunner who was manning the turret on the Humvee's roof. The animation was a disappointment; it was as good as any video game he'd ever played, but only that good. On the other hand, as soon as the scenario began the chair began to vibrate, and he could hear the sound of tires on pavement.

The Hummer rolled along a desert highway and entered a town. House was growing bored when a sniper appeared on an overpass and began firing. The gunner fired back. The smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils, setting off some primitive alarm in his nervous system. As the Humvee approached a marketplace the street filled with people, milling nervously and speaking rapid Arabic. A car bomb exploded, the concussion registering in his bones. An RPG fired at close range, and suddenly the gunner dropped into the back of the vehicle, the top of his body missing, blood spouting everywhere. The voices in the street were hysterical now; the odor of gunpowder grew stronger and mingled with the smell of burning rubber, hair, and flesh. And the guns kept firing ...

Dr. French shut down the show and helped him out of the helmet. House's face felt cold, and he drew deep breaths, trying to steady his heartbeat.

"That was overkill," Dr. French remarked in an off-hand way. "We'd never flood a patient with stimuli like that. But you get the idea."

House was regaining his composure. "Nice," he said. "When's it coming out for Wii?"

The therapist wheeled Deadman into the room and helped him into the chair. He put in the helmet and sat waiting. Krish and House watched from an observation room.

Flooded with stimuli, House thought. A therapist would be careful not to overdo it; a Shiite militiaman, not so much. Imagine being 18 again; a kid, really; and your first experience with the world outside your childhood home involved buddies getting blown apart. An environment where the veiled figures hurrying through the alley could be women trying to get home before curfew—or insurgents who would suddenly turn and fire.

The thought came, unbidden: his own father had been 18 when he joined up. And his first real-world experience outside of Blackshears, Georgia, took place in the rice paddies of Korea.

"I think you're ready to go up to the roof," the therapist was saying to Deadman, who was apparently experiencing a different scenario than House's.

"Hang on," said Deadman, a frantic note in his voice. "Just—lemme think—" Deep breath: "Okay. Go."

-0-

"And this is supposed to heal his psychic wounds?" asked Wilson, his voice rich with skepticism.

House shrugged. "If he thinks it does, it will."

"It's a weird concept," Wilson mused. "Reinact the worst stuff you ever lived through until you're cured."

"Maybe they'll come out with Virtual Marriage," said House. "Six months of weekly sessions, and at the end you grow a pair and ask someone out..."

"... said the guy who didn't ask anyone out for five years."

"I was waiting for the right girl."

"Cameron?"

"Shut up."

"I keep thinking about your farewell luncheon," Wilson said, "and marveling that you resisted the urge to do something really stupid. By way of good-bye."

"I'm getting too old for that kind of crap."

"With age comes wisdom."

"Bullshit, Wilson. With age comes presbyopia, arthritis, and constipation. It gets harder to get in the mood when you have piles."

They rose and strolled to the elevator bank. As they waited, a thought struck Wilson.

"What if they could do a virtual reality game about your leg?" he asked. "What if it would shave some of the angst off the last ten years? Would you try it?"

House hesitated. He doubted he'd have the stomach to relive those months, no matter what the promised payoff. He put the thought aside.

"You know me, Wilson," he grinned. "I like to learn things the hard way."

The End


End file.
